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Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban salutes supporters at the Balna center in Budapest during a general election in Hungary, on April 12, 2026.
(Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images/TNS)
What the end of Viktor Orban means for the New Right
Apr 16, 2026
Viktor Orban, the proudly “illiberal” prime minister of Hungary, beloved by various New Right nationalists and MAGA American intellectuals, was crushed at the polls this weekend.
Over the last decade or so, Hungary became for the New Right what Sweden or Cuba were to the Old Left. For generations, various American leftists loved to cite the Cuban model as better than ours when it came to healthcare, or education. Some would even make wild claims about freedom under Fidel Castro’s dictatorship. Susan Sontag famously proclaimed in 1969 that no Cuban writer “has been or is in jail or is failing to get his works published.” This was simply not true. The still young regime had already imprisoned, tortured or executed scores of intellectuals. (Sontag later recanted.)
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez still talk about Nordic countries as if we have much to learn from them, despite the fact the Nordic model heavily depends on taxing the poor and middle class, not soaking the rich. Now, distinctions matter. The Nordic systems are democratic and decent. Cuba is a Marxist basket case and police state. But the one thing uniting both fan clubs is the tendency to see the countries they imagine them to be rather than the reality.
President Trump, Tucker Carlson and JD Vance (most recently while campaigning for Orban) have all lavished praise on Hungary. Patrick Deneen, a leading New Right intellectual, saw in Orban’s Hungary “a model of a form of opposition to contemporary liberalism that says, ‘There’s a way in which the state and the political order can be oriented to the positive promotion of conservative policies.’ ”
The Heritage Foundation, a once respected conservative think tank that has shed its devotion to the Constitution and traditional conservatism, agrees. Its wayward president, Kevin Roberts, in 2024 called Orban’s Hungary a “model for conservative governance.”
This mirrors Orban’s own explanation: “The Hungarian nation is not simply a group of individuals but a community that must be organized, reinforced and in fact constructed,” he explained in 2014. “And so in this sense the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”
Don’t be put off by the word “liberal” here (or by Deneen’s and Roberts’ tendentious use of “conservative”). Orban and his fans aren’t talking about mere left-wing policies. The “liberal” here is the liberalism of liberal democratic capitalism, John Locke, Adam Smith and the American founding fathers.
“Checks and balances is a U.S. invention that for some reason of intellectual mediocrity Europe decided to adopt,” Orban claimed. Checks and balances is not actually an American invention. But it is a vital liberal bulwark against authoritarianism and corruption.
When the U.S. Supreme Court said that President Biden couldn’t, on a whim, forgive student loan debt or ban evictions, or when it ruled that Trump couldn’t unilaterally tariff the world or indiscriminately deploy troops to American cities, that was checks and balances at work.
Claims that Orban was an authoritarian could be overblown. But he was moving in that direction, larding the courts, universities and state media with political loyalists and, until this weekend, rewriting the election laws to stay in power.
But his corruption was not exaggerated, and his corruption is why he lost. Orban steered state resources to his cronies, family and hometown friends on a massive scale. But that doesn’t mean he broke the law. He wrote — or interpreted with the help of crony judges — the law to make favoritism legal. That sort of favoritism, it turns out, is incredibly bad for the economy because it distorts the market, misallocates scarce resources for self-serving political objectives and discourages investment. It’s fine to say Orban lost because the Hungarian economy and healthcare system were a mess. But that mess stemmed from Orban’s corruption.
In America we tend to think of corruption as illegal; taking bribes, pilfering taxpayer money, etc. But in many parts of the world that’s neither illegal nor even corrupt. It’s the way business is done. In many developing countries — and for most of human history — government is run like a family business. Special treatment for relatives and allies is natural. What’s unnatural is the modern liberal way of putting contracts out to bid and treating taxpayer money as sacrosanct.
No country is perfect at this. Which is one reason we have checks and balances. Each branch is supposed to be on the lookout for abuses by the others, and everyone is supposed to be subordinate to the rule of law, not the law of rulers.
Orbanism is not a new model, or “wave of the future.” It was a tide of the past. And it’s good news that it’s receding.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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An NBC News live feed airs a clip from U.S. President Donald Trump's Truth Social video announcement in the White House James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on February 28, 2026 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States and Israel had launched an attack on Iran Saturday morning.
Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker
When a President Threatens a Civilization, Silence Becomes Permission
Apr 15, 2026
Ninety minutes before his own deadline expired, President Trump agreed to pause his threatened strikes on Iran. The ceasefire was real. The relief was understandable. And none of it changes what happened.
In the days leading up to Tuesday’s deadline, the President of the United States threatened to destroy “every” bridge and power plant in Iran. He warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." He said Iran “can be taken out” in a single night. These were not the ravings of a fringe provocateur. They were statements of declared intent from the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military on earth, broadcast to the world.
Legal experts were unambiguous. More than 100 lawyers and legal scholars signed an open letter through Just Security, warning that intentional strikes on civilian infrastructure violate international humanitarian law. The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a public statement: “Deliberate threats, whether in rhetoric or in action, against essential civilian infrastructure and nuclear facilities must not become the new norm in warfare.” The New York Times, citing historians and former U.S. officials, noted that no recent American president had spoken so openly about committing potential war crimes. Charli Carpenter, a professor of political science and legal studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, warned that if Trump followed through, lower-ranking service members, and not the president, would bear the greatest legal exposure.
Trump’s own response to this legal consensus was telling. Asked directly at a White House press conference whether his threats amounted to war crimes, Trump answered: “You know the war crime? The war crime is allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” When a New York Times reporter raised the Geneva Conventions specifically, Trump responded, “I hope I don’t have to do it,” and then attacked the paper’s credibility. Press Secretary Leavitt, asked whether the president might use nuclear weapons, said: “Only the President knows where things stand and what he will do.” Secretary of State Rubio walked away from the same question. This was not an aberration. The administration had already been firing the top uniformed legal officers known as judge advocates general and repeatedly circumventing traditional routes for military legal advice, dismantling the institutional guardrails designed to prevent exactly this kind of threat before it was ever made.
That is not a democracy with functioning guardrails. That is a democracy in the middle of a stress test it may be failing.
Congress has been in recess since March 27. As Trump threatened to eradicate 90 million people, most lawmakers concluded the wisest response was silence. Speaker Johnson declined to comment while colleagues posted about Easter egg rolls and frosty weather back home. Only one House Republican, Rep. Nathaniel Moran of Texas, publicly objected: “I do not support the destruction of a ‘whole civilization.’ That is not who we are.” Rep. Don Bacon called it “negotiating Trump style — reckless words,” but said he wanted to see the regime buckle. Rep. Ted Lieu, a senior House Democrat, went further, calling on the Pentagon not to obey any orders to eradicate a “whole civilization” and warning troops directly: “If you commit war crimes, the next Administration will prosecute you.” Democrats erupted — former Speaker Pelosi called for invoking the 25th Amendment, ranking members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees called the threats a war crime, and some members introduced articles of impeachment, but none of it moved the needle. Both chambers had already rejected multiple war powers resolutions along mostly party lines, and the institutional mechanisms designed for exactly this moment remained frozen.
The consequences of that failure don’t fall on the president. “The greater responsibility lies with the president and civilian defense officials,” Carpenter wrote, “as well as Congress, whose job is to hold the president accountable to ensure troops receive only lawful orders.” When Congress fails to do that, it isn’t just a failure of democratic norms. It puts the troops themselves in legal and moral jeopardy.
America’s allies have been nearly as quiet. Several Gulf nations privately warned the administration against such strikes, according to CNN, but most avoided any public rebuke. The countries that did speak — Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey — worked as mediators, not as moral voices. The international community managed to help broker a ceasefire. It did not manage to say, clearly and collectively, that what was threatened was wrong.
This is the accountability gap that civic democracy advocates should be naming plainly. The legal framework exists. The evidence of threatened conduct is public and undisputed. What is absent is the institutional will — in Congress, among allies, in the cabinet — to treat the threat of war crimes as something that demands a response regardless of whether the bombs actually fell. That silence is itself a form of permission.
That gap is now painfully visible again. The Islamabad talks — the first direct U.S.-Iran engagement since 2015 and the highest-level since the 1979 Islamic Revolution — collapsed on Sunday after 21 hours without an agreement. Vance left Pakistan, saying Iran had “chosen not to accept our terms.” Within hours, Trump threatened a full naval blockade. The ceasefire that seemed like a reprieve has become, instead, a brief intermission.
We are back where we started: a president who threatened to annihilate a civilization, with no formal accountability from Congress, no unified rebuke from allies, and no consequences for the threats themselves. The bombs didn’t fall last Tuesday. They may yet fall this week. Every actor in the world now knows that a threat of this magnitude can pass without consequence, and that the institutions designed to prevent it will post about Easter egg rolls instead.
Kristina Becvar is Senior Advisor to the Bridge Alliance Education Fund. She previously served as the Executive Director of the Bridge Alliance,
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a group of people sitting on top of a lush green field
Photo by Sebastian Enrique on Unsplash
America Cannot Function without Experts
Apr 13, 2026
America is facing a preventable national safety crisis because expertise is increasingly sidelined at the highest levels of government. In the first three months of 2026, at least 14 people have died in U.S. immigration detention centers — a surge that has drawn international criticism and underscored how life‑and‑death decisions depend on qualified leadership. When those entrusted with safeguarding the public lack the knowledge or are chosen for loyalty instead of competence, danger rarely announces itself. It arrives quietly, through misjudgments no one is prepared to correct.
That warning is urgent today. With Markwayne Mullin now leading the Department of Homeland Security amid rising scrutiny of immigration enforcement, questions about expertise are no longer abstract. Recent reporting shows a dozen detainee deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this year, highlighting systemic risks where leadership decisions have life‑and‑death consequences.
The framers of the Constitution understood this risk. They expected presidents to choose individuals of character, competence, and relevant expertise — and the Senate to reject inexperienced nominees. The Appointments Clause created a shared duty to prevent the concentration of power. When Congress confirms unqualified nominees, that safeguard collapses. The result is a government exposed to failures in the very systems designed to keep people safe — precisely the danger the framers sought to prevent.
No president governs alone. The claim that a single leader can “fix it” contradicts a system built on reliance on expert advice. Today, that premise is being tested.
Americans have watched nominees placed in roles without the qualifications those positions demand — and confirmed despite concern. Reporting shows that leaders lack the experience to direct critical agencies. Measles cases have reached their highest levels since 1991, a reminder of what happens when public health expertise is dismissed. These outcomes are not policy disagreements; they are failures of safety, produced when leadership disregards knowledge.
What emerges is not a series of isolated errors but a pattern. Cronyism — elevating loyalists over experts — erodes trust and replaces judgment with political obedience. When ideologically driven directives override expertise, systems designed to protect citizens falter. As Steve Jobs observed, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do.” When loyalty outweighs competence, decisions degrade, and risk grows, affecting everything from disease control to disaster response.
Presidents are entitled to advisers they trust. But trust is no substitute for competence, especially where errors carry national consequences. Governing demands deep expertise across foreign policy, national security, science, education, and public health. Yet key advisory roles have too often been filled by individuals chosen for loyalty rather than experience, leaving critical gaps where judgment matters most.
Congress has enabled this pattern. It has confirmed nominees whose inexperience was evident. These were choices. Loyalty has been treated as a qualification, with nominees selected to advance agendas or disrupt institutional norms rather than provide competent leadership. Senators have feared retaliation, deferred to party loyalty, and invoked the claim that “a president deserves his team,” even when that team lacked the expertise required to protect the public. Nominations such as Mullin’s bring this failure into sharp focus — raising questions about whether loyalty is again being prioritized over relevant expertise. This is not abstract; when unqualified leaders direct policy, consequences fall on ordinary Americans.
Competence is not optional. It is the baseline of public safety — the foundation of national security, public trust, and democratic stability. No leader can master every field; that is why expertise is indispensable.
This is not theoretical. Early in my career, I was taught that incompetence is never harmless — it creates risk for everyone it touches. I am reminded of that lesson when nominees are advanced despite clear gaps in experience. Congress has confirmed individuals it knew were unprepared, then expressed frustration when they failed. Advancing nominees while recognizing deficiencies calls judgment itself into question and undermines the system designed to check power before harm occurs.
The consequences extend beyond appointments to governance. Many voters once believed that business experience would translate into effective leadership. The record proved more complicated — marked by bankruptcies, legal disputes, and unpaid vendors. These patterns raised questions about judgment. Yet rather than surrounding himself with seasoned experts to offset gaps, the president has often elevated advisers chosen for loyalty over skill. That choice concentrates power while weakening the expertise required to govern.
This approach is now being formalized. Proposals such as Schedule F and initiatives like Project 2025 would allow tens of thousands of career civil servants — scientists, cybersecurity specialists, public health experts — to be replaced with political loyalists. The consequences are clear: when experienced personnel are removed, safety inspections stall and emergency response slows. Scholars warn that such changes would degrade the government’s capacity to respond to crises. A government cannot function when expertise is treated as optional.
The warning signs are already visible. Reporting has documented instances in which national security experts were excluded from conversations with foreign leaders while political advisers with little training were present. These advisers acted as gatekeepers, limiting expert input. When loyalty displaces competence, vulnerabilities emerge — unseen by the public but unmistakable to foreign leaders and adversaries.
The same pattern appears in public communication. Americans have watched leaders make claims about climate science, military operations, and foreign affairs that contradict the assessments of career professionals and scientists. Experts have publicly pushed back against statements that misrepresent complex realities. These moments feel dismissive — as though both their judgment and the expertise of those who serve are being set aside. These are not debates over perspective; they are disagreements rooted in elevated risk when empirical understanding is replaced with political convenience.
At a human level, the risk is clear. Everyone has encountered someone who pretends to be an expert. In ordinary life, it is uncomfortable; in government, it is dangerous. Every sector of American life depends on trained professionals — surgeons, engineers, scientists — whose work prevents risks we rarely see. Government is no different. The stakes are higher.
When leaders dismiss expertise and rely on improvisation, the risks fall not on politicians but on ordinary Americans — our families and our future. A nation cannot navigate danger without expertise at the helm.
My experience reinforces this. I spent my career as a generalist — capable across many areas but aware of my limits. Effective leadership requires recognizing those limits and relying on those with deeper expertise. Healthy institutions depend on leaders who surround themselves with capable professionals. Today, Americans see the opposite: turnover, conflict with experts, and appointments that prioritize loyalty over knowledge. The result is a government that feels unsteady — less able to meet crises.
If the problem is structural, the remedy must be as well. It is not partisan; it is constitutional. Americans can demand transparency about qualifications, support independent oversight, and expect the press to scrutinize qualifications and the confirmation process. But when leaders refuse to listen, citizens must act — through voting, peaceful protest, petitions, and civic engagement that places country above party. Congress must fulfill its duty: confirm qualified nominees, reject those without relevant experience, and exercise oversight.
Competence is a constitutional requirement. It is the minimum the American people deserve.
Americans need experts. The country cannot function without trained professionals guiding national security, public health, science, and diplomacy. It cannot protect its people when expertise is dismissed, and it cannot endure if competence is treated as optional. To neglect expertise in the highest offices is to gamble with public safety. Republics do not fall from force alone, but from folly.
Competence is not a luxury. It is the minimum the American people deserve.
Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and advocate for ethical leadership, government accountability, and civic renewal. She writes about democratic resilience, institutional responsibility, and the conditions that support sustained civic engagement.
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From left to right: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France's President Emmanuel Macron hold a meeting during a summit at Lancaster House on March 2, 2025, in London, England.
(Justin Tallis/WPA Pool/Getty Images/TNS)
Why Trump’s antics don’t work on our allies
Apr 09, 2026
It is among the most familiar patterns of the Trump era. First, the president says or does something weird, rude or otherwise norm-defying. Some elected Republicans object, and the response from Trump and his minions is to shoot the messenger. The dynamic holds constant whether it’s big (January 6 pardons) or small (tweeting “covfefe” just after midnight).
The essence of this low-road-for-me-high-road-for-thee dynamic rests on the belief that Trumpism is a one-way road. Insulting Trump, deservedly or not, is forbidden, while Trump’s antics should be celebrated when possible, defended when necessary, or ignored when neither of those responses is possible. But he should never, ever face consequences for his own actions.
This was the week Trump’s routine went global.
A number of longtime defenders of the transatlantic alliance are very angry at our allies.
NATO members have refused to allow American jets to launch from, or even over, their territory. They won’t help secure the Strait of Hormuz. French President Emmanuel Macron has even called for a coalition to “stand up” against both the United States and China.
I think these are serious strategic mistakes, especially Macron’s posturing to go out like a modern-day de Gaulle instead of as a lame duck. But politically, they are hardly shocking.
Let’s review how we got here.
Trump has routinely mocked our allies. For efficiency’s sake, let’s forgive all of the petty jabs from the first term ostensibly intended to get them to spend more on defense. In Trump’s second term, he claimed our NATO allies would never fight on our behalf, despite the fact that the only time NATO invoked Article 5 — an attack on one is an attack on all — was in the wake of 9/11.
Back in January, in Davos, Switzerland, Trump revised this false claim, admitting that some did fight in Afghanistan, but that “they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.” This infuriated not just allied leaders, but their voters. Indeed, Trump is even unpopular with the populist right across most of Europe.
On a per capita basis, Denmark, not America, had the most casualties in Afghanistan.
Speaking of Denmark, Trump threatened to go to war with the Danes to take possession of Greenland. The threats, public and private, were so relentless and serious that Denmark had to actually plan for a war against the U.S.
Trump didn’t go as far with Canada, but he poisoned that alliance with his repeated insistence that Canada should become America’s 51st state.
Trump also cut off most direct military aid to Ukraine, opting instead to strong-arm Europe into buying American weapons to boost our defense industry. And all while lending rhetorical aid and comfort to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Trump’s “peace envoy” talked up business deals with Russia.
Trump abrogated trade agreements with our allies to levy massive tariffs on nearly all of them, forcing many countries to pursue trade agreements with China. His erratic shifting of policies and rates sent allied economies scrambling. Trump’s American defenders may roll their eyes at his openness to emoluments — a plane from Qatar, a gold bar and Rolex from Swiss business leaders, a crown from South Korea — but just imagine how this stuff is viewed by the broader public in allied countries. Trump mocks notions of shared values, but if you bring him a trinket, he’ll talk.
Then Trump launched a surprise war on Iran without consulting our allies. When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested sending aircraft carriers to help, Trump mocked him.
“That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer,” Trump posted on Truth social. “But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”
Trump has since changed his tune. In his national address last week, Trump essentially called our allies cowards who needed to muster some “delayed courage.” On Monday, he explained he was done with NATO because they refused to give him Greenland.
Trump’s one-way-street antics work domestically because of his support within the GOP base. But he can’t incite a primary challenge to elected allied leaders, not when he’s loathed. In January his approval rating in the U.K. was 16 percent (and in Denmark just 4 percent). One in 5 Europeans see America as a greater threat than China or North Korea.
Again, I think it would be good for Europe—which has seen energy prices skyrocket because of the war and still needs the U.S. for its security—to swallow some of the humiliation and help. But the refusal of Trump and his defenders to acknowledge why it’s politically hard at this point is maddening.
Trump would never dream of taking a devastating political hit for an ally. But he and his defenders cannot fathom why allies feel the same way about him.
(Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.)
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