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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Tens of thousands of Brazilians joined an independence day rally called by members of the rightwing opposition in protest against a supreme court judge who banned Elon Musk’s social media platform X in the country. 

Dressed in the national colours of yellow and green, attendees at Saturday’s demonstration in São Paulo held posters demanding the removal of justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has attracted controversy for a wide-ranging crackdown on digital disinformation. 

“I came here today in favour of freedom of expression. The constitution is being violated,” said 25 year-old radiologist Mayara Ribeira, wearing the shirt of the Brazilian football team. “The judge should be impeached”. 

X went offline in Latin America’s most populous nation just over a week ago after it ignored court orders to block certain accounts suspected of spreading falsehoods, many belonging to supporters of former hard-right president Jair Bolsonaro. 

It affected some 20mn users and marked an escalation of a months-long row over takedown decrees between Musk and Moraes, whom the tech entrepreneur has accused of censorship. 

“I don’t want anybody to be silenced, if they are leftwing or rightwing,” said retiree Elayne Nunes, 58, who travelled from the neighbouring state of Minas Gerais. “I’m happy that Elon Musk has brought to international attention what is happening in Brazil”.

The case has turned into a cause célèbre in the global debate about online free speech and energised Brazil’s populist conservative movement, which claims to be unfairly targeted by the judge. 

Allies of Moraes frame his actions as necessary to safeguard democracy against fake news, but opponents accuse him of eroding liberties. 

The blackout of X has divided opinion in Brazil. A survey by AtlasIntel found nearly 51 per cent of respondents disagreed with the ban, versus just over 48 per cent in favour.

Speakers at the event on Avenida Paulista urged senators to launch an impeachment of the judge, who has also become a target for wider criticisms that Brazil’s supreme court is overreaching its legal limits. 

They also appealed for an amnesty for people arrested in connection with the storming of government buildings in Brasília on January 8, 2023 by radical Bolsonaro supporters. 

Many of the rioters called for a military coup against leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in the previous year’s election. 

“I hope that the federal senate puts a stop to this dictator Alexandre de Moraes, who does more harm to Brazil than Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva himself,” Bolsonaro said on stage. 

The ex-president faces a number of supreme court investigations from his time in office, including over an alleged coup plot — that was never implemented — to stay in power.

Researchers at the University of São Paulo estimated there were 45,400 people at Saturday’s event in Brazil’s largest city.

The trigger for X’s suspension was its failure to meet a deadline set by Moraes to appoint a new legal representative in the country, as required by domestic law. Musk had closed the company’s local office last month in protest at the judge’s orders. 

In his decision to block access to the platform, Moraes said X was seeking to create an environment of “total impunity” and a “lawless land” on Brazilian social media ahead of municipal elections next month.

Creomar de Souza at consultancy Dharma Political Risk said impeachment of the justice was unlikely for now: “It looks like we’re in for a long battle between Moraes and political forces in Brazil and abroad”.

Watch the FT Weekend festival session here.

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has dented Vladimir Putin’s war narrative and triggered “questions” among the Russian elite about the point of the war, two of the world’s leading spy chiefs have said.

CIA director Bill Burns said Kursk was “a significant tactical achievement” that had boosted Ukrainian morale and exposed Russia’s weaknesses. It has “raised questions . . . across the Russian elite about where is this all headed”, he said.

He was speaking at the Financial Times’ Weekend festival in London on Saturday alongside MI6 chief Richard Moore.

Moore said the Kursk offensive was “a typically audacious and bold move by the Ukrainians . . . to try and change the game” — although he cautioned it was “too early” to say how long Kyiv’s forces would be able to control the Russian territory they had seized.

It is the first time the two heads have appeared together at a public event in the history of their agencies’ 77-year intelligence sharing partnership. It also represents the latest move by the US and British spy agencies to come out of the shadows to warn the countries they serve about the mounting dangers that the world faces.

The spy chiefs spoke about what they called an unprecedented range of threats to the international world order, from Putin’s war in Ukraine and Russia’s campaign of sabotage operations across Europe to the rise of China and rapid technological change.

One area of particular focus is the conflict in the Middle East.

Asked whether there was going to be a deal to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza, Burns, who has been deeply involved the negotiations, said: “This goes to a question of whether or not leaders on both sides are prepared to recognise that enough is enough, and that the time has come for them to make some hard choices and some difficult compromises.”

Burns said that, while he could not say the talks were going to be a success, “I also cannot tell you how close we are right now”. A potential deal between Israel and Hamas was “90 per cent” there and “the last 10 per cent” was always the hardest part.

A more detailed proposal would come in “the next several days . . . [and] my hope is that they [the Israeli and Hamas leaders] will recognise what is at stake here”.

Burns also stressed that a two-state solution was central to securing a lasting peace, as it was “crucial to offer some sense of hope for the day after, not just for Gaza, but for all Palestinians and Israelis”.

“It is a very elusive goal . . . but the only thing I would say is: show me what’s a better alternative,” he said.

Burns, 68, is a career diplomat now working as a spy, and Moore, 61, is a career intelligence officer who has previously worked as a diplomat. Both are Oxford university graduates who have led parallel professional lives working on Russian, Middle Eastern and Asian affairs.

On Russia, both men said there was no sign that Putin’s grip on power had lessened. But it would be wrong to “confuse a tight grip on power with a stable grip”, Moore said, especially as the Kursk incursion had “brought the war home to ordinary Russians”.

Both also said it would be wrong to take Putin’s threats of nuclear escalation lightly but that the west should not be unnecessarily intimidated. “Putin is a bully and is going to continue sabre-rattling from time to time,” Burns said.

Asked whether Iran had shipped short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, Burns said that doing so would “mark a dramatic escalation”.

Moore said that if Russia did use Iranian missiles in Ukraine, alongside the drones that Tehran had already supplied, it would be “very obvious”.

Recent Russian sabotage operations across Europe were “reckless”, Moore said, describing Russian intelligence as “having gone a bit feral”. But “in the UK that is not new”, he added, referring to the attempted assassination of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.

Asked if Russian intelligence might be conducting similar sabotage operations against the US by abetting illegal migration across the Mexico border, Burns said: “It’s something we are very sharply focused on. Part of that is a function of so many Russian agents [being] kicked out of Europe. So they are looking for somewhere to go instead.”

Despite the threat posed by Russia and the risk of conflagration in the Middle East, both Burns and Moore stressed that their biggest challenge was China’s rise.

Burns said the funds that the CIA devoted to China had tripled over the past three years to 20 per cent of the agency’s budget, and that he had travelled twice to China over the past year for talks to “avoid unnecessary misunderstandings”.

Moore described regular contact with his Chinese counterparts as “essential”.

Burns and Moore said one aim of their joint appearance was to underscore the strength of the UK-US relationship at a time of unprecedented global risks.

“The international world order . . . is under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the cold war,” both spy chiefs wrote in an article published on Saturday in the FT. Combating that risk “is at the very foundation of our special relationship . . . [which] can be relied upon into the next century,” they said.

The closest comparable occasion to their rare joint performance on Saturday was a news conference given by Ken McCallum, the head of British domestic intelligence MI5, and his US counterpart, Christopher Wray, the head of the FBI, in London in July 2022. 

Former Vice President and influential Republican Dick Cheney released a statement announcing his endorsement of Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris for President. Speaking out against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, Cheney said that he can “never be trusted with power again.”

“In our nation’s 248 year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney, 83, said in the statement shared on Sept. 6. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” he continued, referencing the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Cheney, who served as Vice President under President George W. Bush between 2001 and 2009 went on to say that American citizens have a “duty” to prioritize the nation over partisan politics.

The statement came Friday, hours after one of Cheney’s daughters, former Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney revealed on a panel at the Texas Tribune’s annual festival that her father will be voting for Harris. 

“If you think about the moment we’re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes—and he said publicly—there has never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is,” she had said on the panel moderated by journalist Mark Leibovich.

Cheney’s endorsement marks the most high profile Republican politician to announce that they will vote for Harris over Republican nominee Trump, further spotlighting other former establishment Republicans who have yet to come out to endorse Trump during this run for the presidency—many of whom have been critical of Trump in the past—including his own former Vice President Mike Pence, former President George W. Bush, and former Republican nominee for President Mitt Romney.

The Harris campaign responded in a statement on Friday, supporting the endorsement.

“The Vice President is proud to have the support of Vice-President Cheney, and deeply respects his courage to put country over party,” said campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, per the Washington Post.

Trump reacted to Cheney’s statement via a post shared on his own social media platform, Truth Social. He called the former Vice President an “irrelevant RINO”— which stands for Republican in Name Only and is a term used by some to describe Republicans who are viewed as being disloyal to the party.

“He’s the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars, just like Comrade Kamala Harris. I am the Peace President, and only I will stop World War III!,” Trump wrote.

Earlier in the week, Liz Cheney herself publicly supported Harris, announcing her endorsement for the Democratic nominee. “As a conservative and someone who believes in and cares deeply about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses—not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” she said on Sept. 4 at a Sanford School of Public Policy event at Duke University in North Carolina.

The former Wyoming representative was ostracized by Trump-backed Republicans after she sat as one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over allegations that he incited the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.