Alexandre de Moraes

Alexandre de Moraes (; born 13 December 1968) is a Brazilian jurist, ex-politician, former president of the Superior Electoral Court and currently justice of the Supreme Federal Court. Moraes was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Michel Temer in 2017 when serving as Minister of Justice and Public Security. Previously, Moraes had acted as Secretary for Public Security in the State of São Paulo and had been a member of the Brazilian Public Prosecutor's Office.

Since around 2020, Moraes has generated wide public attention in Brazil and abroad for ordering several arrests, search warrants, and terminations of social media accounts of individuals and groups involved or suspected to be involved in planning coups and propagating fake news, in addition to nationwide blocks of widely used platforms that have failed to comply to his judicial demands, such as Telegram and Twitter. He has been a widely controversial figure since, gathering a great number of both supporters and opponents. While critics say his measures are authoritarian, abusive, anti-constitutional, and partisan, to supporters they are legal, albeit stern, and have been necessary to maintain the country's democratic rule, preventing coups and the rise of extremism. Among Moraes' supporters is the current left-wing president of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and among his critics is the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro.

Moraes' presidency of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court and certain actions he took during the 2022 Brazilian general election has made him the target of criticism, including some false conspiracy theories, by Bolsonaro and his supporters. After the 2023 Brazilian Congress attack, Moraes ordered several controversial judicial actions. Moraes ordered the arrest of the invaders, which provoked protests from parliamentarians and groups linked to the political right (according to research, 24%), while the majority (63%) of people supported Moraes' decision. Another controversy is defining whether the invaders of the Three Powers Square were patriots or terrorists, with Moraes classifying them as terrorists. Provided by Wikipedia