 Salaam from the People's Dispatch Studios here in New Delhi. I am Siddharth Ani and you're watching The Daily Debrief. On the show today, we look at the violation of democratic institutions which continues almost unabated in major world nations already in the early days of 2023. We'll examine the new Brazilian government's response to a violent riot and storming of key buildings in the capital, Brasilia. In the United States, do events in the House of Representatives over the past few days, portend policy and governance paralysis over the next two years. And finally, Israel has a new set of punitive measures against Palestinians and why the new government there is now directly targeting the Palestinian Authority. First up in response to the organized invasion of the Supreme Federal Court, the National Congress and the Planalto Palace, which is the office of the president. This is all in Brazil. By supporters of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday, the Lula government has taken rapid steps to safeguard democratic institutions and curtail the impact of this attempted coup. Bolsonaro and his supporters have, for years, raised false and unbacked accusations against Brazil's electoral system, leading up to the shocking scenes that we witnessed on TV yesterday and today, where in thousands of far-right hooligans went on a rampage in Brasilia in a continued rejection of the election results in which Bolsonaro lost to current president Luiz Inasio Lula da Silva. Zoe joins me for more on this developing story. Zoe, since Don has broken in that part of the world, what further details are you getting in terms of report coming in from various parts of Brazil? And what's the government's response been to this, what has to be called an attempted coup? Well, since this morning, the arrests have been continuing. The army has now evicted one of the major Bolsonarista camps that was outside one of the army quartels bases. In Brasilia, over a thousand people have been arrested. Until now, 1,200 people, I think, to be exact. Those arrests, I think, will continue as we know there were thousands of people that actually traveled to Brasilia to carry out this attempted coup. And meanwhile, in São Paulo and in the south of the country, road blockades have been erected, burning tires, impeding traffic. So it's yet to be seen how those will be dealt with. We know that in earlier moments, especially right after the elections, actually the highway police worked with these Bolsonaristas. We're refusing to stop these blockades. So it's definitely developing situation. However, the federal government has called for all of the people that participated in these actions, who finance these actions, who are in any way related to permitting that these take place be tried and be brought to justice. Lula gave a very, very firm speech yesterday, saying that no one will go unpunished. Also important to point out that we wrote, we shared an article from Brazil, the fact about this is about the complicity of the federal district's governor, Ibanez Rosha. He actually was responsible for scaling down the security in Brasilia around the minister's espionade, essentially allowing this to take place. He also appointed the Bolsonaristas Minister of Justice and Security as the federal district's justice for the minister of security. So because of all these reasons, he's actually been taken out of his post. He's been taken away for three months. This is a very strong action, you know, right after last night after Lula's address after the decree that he said that there was a federal intervention in the police forces. Ibanez made a pronouncement and said that he was very sorry and that he didn't approve of what had happened. But of course that's really too little too late. Knowing that these buses were headed to Brasilia, knowing about the threat of violence that had been shared really widely on social media. This actually, while it is a shocking event, it is not shocking that it happened. They had been announcing it for days. They had made major preparations and plans to actually carry this out. And so the fact that other security forces in Brasilia were not prepared and really intentionally were not preparing. They believe is the fault of Ibanez Rosha and as such he has been taken aside. Bolsonaro is currently in the United States, Zoe, and there's pressure from within the Democratic Party on Joe Biden to sort of take steps towards repatriating him towards Brazil so he can face the consequences of this orchestrated plot. What is the progress on that? What have the reactions been from the, I suppose, political establishment and other sections in the US? Well, it's quite interesting because many people have compared what happened on January 8 to January 6, 2021 and they're quite right for that. The images are very silent, similar. The actions that they carried out are very similar just complete destruction of the state institutions related to allegations of electoral fraud. Of course, in this case it's a bit bizarre because Bolsonaro was already out of the country. It doesn't seem like there's actually any possibility that he would return and even take office. He himself seems to have a defeatist attitude. So that's one major difference. But I think because of these similarities, I really struck a nerve with Democrats who were also kind of the target of this style of invasion in a sense. And even before the elections, many Democrats had made statements and pronouncements regarding the possibility of a January 6 style scenario in Brazil. And many of them warned about this and said that, for example, some members of Congress had tried to pass a clause saying that the aid to Brazil would be contingent on the armed forces not responding to these to the elections, etc. So I think what we saw yesterday is that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez took a very, very bold position and said that she condemned what was happening in Brasilia, and she called on the US government to cease giving refuge to Jair Bolsonaro. He traveled to Florida on December 30, maybe thinking that he would be received by Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, but he was not. And now he's staying with a Brazilian MMA fighter in Florida, kind of just wandering around enjoying the fact that he doesn't have to really face up to any of the crimes he committed as president. And so, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Joaquin Castro, they're all calling for him to be extradited to Brazil. There are multiple investigations that have been opened up into Jair Bolsonaro, even when he was president. And especially now with this coup attempt with his supporters carrying this out, and I'm sure that once the investigations are underway, there will be clear indications of his participation of members of his government, his former government's participation in everything that happened. And so that's that's one of the reasons I don't think this has advanced while the United States government and Joe Biden himself have released statements condemning what happened. So far, they've showed no signs of kind of moving on this demand to extradite Jair Bolsonaro. Thanks very much, Zoe. And we'll hear from you on Brazil in the next few days, I'm sure. As pressure mounts on US President Joe Biden from his own party to return Jair Bolsonaro, of course, who is living in the US at the moment back to his home country. Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives have elected Republican Kevin McCarthy as its speaker after being voted down on the first 14 attempts. Anish has been following the story closely and joins us with his take on the events as well as the impact they might have. Anish, welcome back to the show. It's kind of ironic, but also somehow fitting that these events concluded almost two years exactly after the January 6th, 21 riots. And that Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker after, you know, all the drama that took place at some time seemed like episodes of a sitcom even. What did you make of it both procedurally as well as the actual battle that was ongoing? And what are your sort of key takeaways from this entire situation? Well, one takeaway is that the pro-Trump sort of faction within the what is called as the Freedom House caucus of the Republican Party, which is a small minority within the Republican Party itself, which was divided during the whole speaker election. But a very small number actually managed to get a lot more than they could have imagined in like maybe with a larger majority. So the fact that Republicans won just a very small majority actually helped them quite a bit and that gave them the leverage to extract the sort of demands that would eventually give them the power to do what they want in the House, or more power than what they would have usually had in an earlier version of how things worked in the House. So some of the takeaways that we can think of is like the fact that this could have been done earlier by the left within or the so-called left within the Democratic Party, but we are not going to get into that. But it's a fact that a lot of things were possible in an earlier House of Representatives under a Democratic majority, which did not happen. And that only saddens that the fact that this was demonstrated by a very right wing, a very sort of pro-Trump kind of grouping, a very small minority to begin with, which was not very successful also in the elections, which kind of did that extraction from the House, which actually made it like at least on paper from a Democratic. Some of the, if you look at some of the demands that they got include the fact that even a single member can initiate a sort of speaker reelection. And that was something that the previous Democratic majority in the House actually kind of overturned and turned it into a, like requiring at least five members to do that. So all the other things include the fact that they want an internal majority to decide on what kind of bills and what kind of legislations are introduced in the House and will be passed within the House. And that is an important thing because we have to remember that the American congressional system does not work in the same way that parliamentary systems around the world do, or even most legislatures, even within a presidential system works. So it's more or less the leadership within the ruling block that pretty much dictates the entire business within the House. Obviously, there are individual members who do end up, you know, tabling bills and everything. But if you look at the significant ones, especially spending bills and so on, those are something that the leadership of the majority block decides. And if the majority, and this sort of majority within the majority is kind of like a very Westminster thing as well, that the ruling blocks majority will now sort of set the agenda for the House. The speaker gets reduced like a cut in size in many ways because of that. It also brings down the powers of the establishment within the Republican Party on how things work, not just in the congressional point of view, but the legislative point of view, but also within how the party works outside of the Congress as well. So these are very significant demands. These are very procedural demands. We have to remember that none of these are very clear cut policy demands. Very few actually, they do have some policy demands that they made, and we think that those have been agreed upon. But these procedural demands are the ones that are going to empower this small group of 19 congressmen to essentially now decide a whole host of things in the coming two years or thousand. Makes sense Anish, but we also have to like you pointing out, move on to the governance and policy sort of impact that this will have for the next two years. Are we likely to see a complete paralysis of government, essentially? Yes, so we need to really remember some of the very little policy details that were made clear and were demanded by the small group of 19 right wing congress persons, apart from obviously increasing border policing also includes budget cuts, spending cuts, massive spending cuts that can actually also affect the military or the defense budget that the US has recently passed. And that in itself is something that a majority of Republicans who call themselves moderates obviously, but are pretty much just conservatives would not be very happy with because they are very happy with welfare cuts. They're happy with cuts on education on other sorts of things. But they're never happy with any kind of spending cut on the military. And that especially considering the fact that the very right wing of the Republican Party are of the opinion that the war in Ukraine is very costly to the United States. This is definitely another sort of ideological line that is so obviously they can threaten complete policy paralysis. They can just paralyze the entire Congress if they want to because obviously the small majority is going to unless obviously the Republicans cross the aisle and gain support from the Democrats, which can also happen. We have seen that happen multiple times when it comes to defense spending and foreign policy issues. But obviously these people have shown that they can actually put the entire proceedings of the House to a standstill if they want to. And they are quite stubborn in many ways in getting what they want. Very much Anish for that detailed update on what's going on in the U.S. And finally, Israel's government has revoked the travel permits of the Palestinian authorities foreign minister Riyad Al Maliki along with several other prominent Palestinians who are allowed to use these permits to freely move in and out of the occupied territories on diplomatic, political and other governance related work. The Netanyahu government claims that the move is part of a series of punitive measures taken by it against the Palestinian Authority for pushing a United Nations General Assembly vote last month. The vote sought a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice on the status of the Israeli occupation. Abdul is in studio now and joins us for more details on this story. Abdul, welcome back to the show. We've seen this year already the new government in place and a series of steps, measures, this time being called retaliatory measures being taken by the Israeli government against Palestinians living in the occupied territories. What led up to the latest set of announcements and measures including the blocking of visa to the foreign minister? I think on December 30th there was an even vote in General Assembly which basically talked about is mostly a rhetorical resolution which talks about taking legal opinion from the International Court of Justice about the status of the Israeli occupation. Of course the resolution despite the fact that Israel was very dismissive about the entire process, it seems that Israel has not, there is some effect of that resolution and the extremist right wing government which Israel now has basically taken it on heart and now basically trying to corner the Palestinian Authority claiming that what they are doing is against the interest of the Israel. And therefore they have not only taken some kind of travel restrictions, imposed some kind of travel restrictions on certain significant officials of the Palestinian Authority in violation of the Oslo agreement. Of course, for example the foreign minister when he was coming back from Brazil, he came to know that his permit has been revoked. It means that there is no difference between the PA officials and the common Palestinians who have to take permission every time they want to move out of the occupied territories. So that is one, apart from that they have also transferred around 39 million dollars from the Palestinian Authority's tax collections. According to the Oslo agreement there is an arrangement where the taxes are collected by the Israeli government and they are transferred to the Palestinian Authority from the occupied territories. And while transferring they have kept 39 million dollars of that crucial fund claiming that now it will go to the Palestinian victims of the terrorism in Israel. Instead of what they claim the Palestinians give this money to encourage terrorism. It means the Palestinians have been using part of their revenue to help the families who were basically affected by the Israeli armed forces killing and other imprisonments and so on and so forth. Apart from that there are also several other measures. For example, Itamar Ben-Guir who is now the National Security Minister has banned Israeli lawmakers to visit Palestinian prisoners. He has also announced the banning of any display of Palestinian flag as a promotion he claims is waving Palestinian flag is promotion of terrorism and so on and so forth. So these are the measures which Israeli government has taken against that vote. In the financial sense, Abdul this is taking a sort of play out of the United States' book and what they did with Afghanistan by saying it is for victims of terrorism but just Israeli victims instead of Palestinians. What kind of impact will this have? Of course the economic impact is quite obvious. Palestinians are already in a very bad condition when it comes to economic. Not only because of the Israeli blockade on Gaza which has deteriorated the economic conditions there made it one of the worst places to live in. Even the West Bank, the COVID of course has an impact. Apart from that the other global events also have an impact. Apart from that the occupation itself is a big reason for the deteriorating economic conditions in the West Bank. They are not allowed to export freely. The imports are also restricted. The foreign funding which used to be a very crucial source of Palestinian kind of revenue has also been restricted in last few years. So over and above that whatever extra, whatever revenue was coming even from that a significant part, $39 million is a big amount for a small economy in West Bank. So it is going to impact massively as far as the economic part is concerned. Apart from that the travel restrictions will create a lot of problems for Palestinian authority to kind of carry forward their mission. Because now the Palestinian authority if we talk about only that part of Palestinian resistance is mostly relying on the making international public opinion against the occupation status. And if they have to seek visa each time they want to move out from the West Bank, it means their one-to-one contact with the foreign diplomats is going to be massively affected. Whether this will sustain, this measure will remain in practice for long or not, we do not know. But given the statements which Itmar, Ben Guyer, Netanyahu and other ministers in the Israeli government have made yesterday, it seems they are quite convinced that this measure will go on further. In fact, Smotry is one of the ministers in the Israeli government even said that he does not care if the PA remains in existence or not. And that is a contrast from the previous administrations in Israel which no matter what they wanted to keep the Palestinian authority intact. So this time it seems they don't want the Palestinian, they are attacking the Palestinian authority itself. Alright, thank you very much for that update Abdul. That's all we have on this episode of The Daily Debrief. As always we invite you to head to our website peoplesdispatch.org for more details on these stories as well as all of the other work we do. Also don't forget to give us a follow on the social media platform of your choice. We'll be back same time, same place tomorrow with another episode. Until then stay safe. Goodbye.