A majority of Brazil’s supreme court judges have voted to convict the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a military coup, leaving the far-right populist facing a decades-long sentence for leading the criminal conspiracy.

Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha ruled on ​Thursday that Bolsonaro – a former paratrooper who was elected president in 2018 – was guilty of seeking to forcibly cling to power after losing the 2022 election, meaning three of the five judges involved in the trial had found Brazil’s former leader guilty.

Delivering her decisive vote, Rocha denounced what she called an attempt to “sow the malignant seed of anti-democracy” in Brazil – but celebrated how the country’s institutions had survived and were fighting back.

“Brazilian democracy was not shaken,” Rocha told a court in the capital, Brasília, warning of the spread of “the virus of authoritarianism”.

On Tuesday, two other judges, Alexandre de Moraes and Flávio Dino, also declared the 70-year-old politician guilty of leading what the former called “a criminal organisation” that had sought to plunge the South American country back into dictatorship.

“Jair Bolsonaro was leader of this criminal structure,” Moraes said during a five-hour address in which he offered a comprehensive account of the slow-burn conspiracy against Brazilian democracy.

“The victim is the Brazilian state,” said Moraes, claiming the plot had unfolded between July 2021 and January 2023, when Bolsonaro supporters rampaged through Brasília after the election’s leftwing winner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, took power.

A fourth judge, Luiz Fux, voted to absolve Bolsonaro on Wednesday, claiming there was “absolutely no proof” the former president had been aware or part of an alleged plot to assassinate Lula and Moraes in late 2022, or had tried to stage a coup.

Fux called the 8 January 2023 uprising – when hardcore Bolsonaristas ransacked the supreme court, presidential palace and congress – a “barbaric act” that had caused “damage of an Amazonian-scale”. But the judge, who also controversially argued that the court lacked jurisdiction over the case, claimed there was no proof Bolsonaro was to blame for inciting the riots.

Fux did, however, vote to convict two of Bolsonaro’s closest allies – his former defence minister Gen Walter Braga Netto and his former aide-de-camp Lt Col Mauro Cid – for the crime of violently attempting to abolish Brazilian democracy. The judge concluded that the pair had helped plan and bankroll a plot to murder Moraes in order to generate social mayhem they hoped would trigger a military intervention.

Bolsonaro’s sentence is expected to be set on Friday after the remaining judge, Cristiano Zanin, has cast his vote. Experts say the sentence for crimes including engineering a coup d’état and violently attempting to abolish Brazil’s democracy could be as high as 43 years. The former president did not attend court this week, remaining in his nearby mansion, where he is under house arrest and where police officers have been stationed to ensure he does not flee to one of Brasília’s foreign embassies.

Progressive elation at the downfall of a president blamed for rampant environment destruction, hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths and attacks on minorities, has been tempered by the realisation that his political movement remains very much alive. Some fear Fux’s questioning of the judges’ authority over the case could open the door to legal challenges and even the trial’s annulment in the future.

“I wouldn’t declare Jair Bolsonaro’s political death,” said Dr Camila Rocha, a political scientist from the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning who studies the Brazilian right.

Rocha expected supporters of the former president to keep fighting to rescue their leader from jail. Likely strategies included trying to elect a large number of rightwing senators in next year’s elections who could impeach members of the supreme court considered Bolsonaro’s foes; petitioning Donald Trump to heap more pressure on Brazil over Bolsonaro’s plight; and trying to ensure that a pro-Bolsonaro candidate beats Lula in the 2026 presidential election. Their hope was that a rightwing president might grant Bolsonaro a pardon, although the supreme court could torpedo those plans, she said.

“I think they’ll continue trying various ways of getting Bolsonaro out of jail and to uphold his leadership and keep him visible,” she predicted.

In recent weeks, pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers have been pushing the idea of an amnesty for their leader and others who were involved in the coup attempt and the 8 January 2023 riots in Brasília. They claim such forgiveness would help “pacify” a politically divided country.

But Fabio Victor, the author of a book about military involvement in Brazilian politics called Camouflaged Power, said he believed an amnesty would serve as an “incentive to illegality”. “It would send an awful signal – it would undoubtedly represent a setback to democracy,” he warned.

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The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has been convicted of plotting a military coup.

Three out of five Supreme Court justices found the 70-year-old guilty of leading a conspiracy aimed at keeping him in power after he lost the 2022 election to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

While the plot failed to enlist enough support from the military to go ahead, it did culminate in the storming of government buildings by Bolsonaro’s supporters on 8 January 2023, the justices found.

One justice acquitted Bolsonaro and a final one is yet to vote, but the simple majority is enough to convict the former president, who could now face decades in jail. He will be sentenced on Friday.

The former president’s fate was sealed on Thursday when Justice Carmén Lúcia cast her vote.

She found him guilty on all the five charges: attempting to stage a coup, leading an armed criminal organisation, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, and two more charges related to the damage of property during the storming of buildings in Brasília on 8 January 2023.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation rose last month as the price of gas, groceries and airfares jumped while new data showed applications for unemployment aid soared, putting the Federal Reserve in an increasingly tough spot as it prepares to cut rates at its meeting next week despite persistent price pressures.

Consumer prices increased 2.9% in August from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday, up from 2.7% the previous month and the biggest jump since January. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 3.1%, the same as in July. Both figures are above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

A separate government report Thursday showed that weekly applications for unemployment aid jumped 27,000 to 263,000, the highest in nearly four years. Requests for jobless benefits are a proxy for layoffs. Recent reports have also showed that hiring has weakened dramatically this year and was lower than previously estimated last year.

The data raises the specter of “stagflation,” a trend that last bedeviled the U.S. economy in the 1970s. The term refers to a period of slower growth, higher unemployment along with rising inflation. It is unusual because a weak economy typically keeps inflation in check.

Such a scenario could create major headaches for the Fed as it prepares for a meeting next week, when policymakers are widely expected to cut their short-term rate to about 4.1% from 4.3%. The Fed is under relentless pressure from President Donald Trump to cut rates. At the same time, stubborn inflation while the job market is weakening is difficult for the central bank because they are diverging trends that require polar reactions from Fed policymakers to address.

Typically the Fed would cut its key rate when unemployment rises to spur more spending and growth. Yet it would do the opposite and raise rates — or at least keep them unchanged — in the face of rising inflation.

Last month, Chair Jerome Powell signaled that Fed officials are increasingly concerned about weaker hiring, setting the stage for a rate cut next week. Wall Street investors think there is an 85% chance the Fed will cut twice more after that, according to futures pricing tracked by CME Fedwatch.

“Consumer inflation came in mildly hotter than forecast, but not nearly high enough to prevent the Fed from starting to cut rates next week,” Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist for Nationwide, said. “The labor market is losing steam and reinforces that the Fed needs to start cutting rates next week and that it will be the start of a series of rate reductions.”

Where inflation heads next is a key question for the Fed. While Thursday’s report showed inflation picked up, data released Wednesday suggested prices at the wholesale level are cooling. Economists also noted that a separate measure of inflation that the Fed prefers, which will be released in about two weeks, should come in lower than Thursday’s figures and paint a more benign picture of prices.

On a monthly basis, overall inflation accelerated, rising 0.4% from July to August, faster than the 0.2% pace the previous month. Core prices rose 0.3% for the second straight month.

Many economists and some key members of the Fed think that the current pickup in inflation reflects one-time increases from Trump’s sweeping tariffs and won’t lead to a lasting inflationary trend. They argue that a weaker job market will hold down wages and force companies to keep prices in check.

Subadra Rajappa, head of U.S. rates strategy at Societe Generale, said that while inflation was elevated last month, there were also signs that the cost of services moderated, suggesting that outside of tariffs, prices are cooling.

Yet Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, a tax and consulting firm, says that higher-income households are still spending sufficiently to push some prices higher, such as hotel and airfare costs, which leapt last month. Such spending could keep inflation stubbornly high even in a weak job market, he said.

“The Fed’s getting ready to cut into a sustained increase in prices,” he said. “Very unusual spot. … we can see tariff induced inflation in a slow, steady and methodical manner.”

Goods prices picked up last month, a sign Trump’s sweeping tariffs are pushing up costs. Gas prices jumped 1.9% just from July to August, the biggest monthly increase since a 4% rise in December. Grocery prices climbed 0.6%, pushed higher by more expensive tomatoes, apples, and beef. Rental costs also increased, rising 0.4%, faster than the previous month.

Clothing costs rose 0.5% just last month, though they are still just slightly more expensive than a year ago. Furniture costs rose 0.3% and are 4.7% higher than a year earlier.

Some restaurant owners have boosted prices to offset the rising costs of food. Cheetie Kumar, who owns Mediterranean eatery Ajja in Raleigh, North Carolina, said she’s facing higher costs on everything ranging from spices she imports from India, coffee and chocolate she gets from Brazil, and soy she gets from Canada.

“Those are things that I cannot source locally, we do source a lot of produce and meat and everything else from local farmers, but I don’t know any nutmeg growers in North Carolina,” she said.

Her overall costs are up about 10% from a year ago, with beef costs up 7%, and much bigger increases for things like coffee, chocolate (300%) and spices (100%).

She’s raised prices on some of her menu items by $1 or $2, but said she’s at the limit of how much she can do so before demand wanes and she stops earning a profit.

Bigger companies are also feeling the pinch.

E.L.F. Cosmetics said this spring that it was raising prices by $1. Last month, however, CFO Mandy Fields said it is no longer certain whether the $1 price increases will be enough to offset rising tariff costs.

Shoppers have yet to feel the big sting that economists had predicted earlier in the year. Many retailers ordered goods ahead of tariffs and have also absorbed a big chunk of the costs rather than passing them along to consumers, who’ve grown increasingly leery of price increases.

But Walmart and other big chains have warned of costs increases as they replenish their inventories, with the full impact of tariffs in effect.

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AP Business Writer Anne D’Innocenzio contributed from New York. AP Business Writer Mae Anderson contributed from Nashville.