I’m no Trumper. I hate what they represent. But I can occasionally appreciate their approach to ritually humiliating their own. In this vein, it’s sort of a nice touch that they’ve made JD Vance — who’s been leaking to basically every news outlet that will listen that he was 100% against this war and it’s totally not his fault — own it outright, wrap himself in it really, in Pakistan.

Chef’s kiss, as they say.

We need to talk about the president’s 2027 proposed defense budget. It’s not like there’s been a shortage of reporting about it. But even with all that, I don’t think people have really absorbed the extent of it, it’s significance, the scale of growth. The president wants to increase the defense budget by more than 40%. That comes on top of his request for $200 billion to fund his current war with Iran.

Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has become a kind of godfather of competitive authoritarianism, an autocratic visionary for the 21st century that right-wing parties around the world are seeking to emulate. Trump’s second term draws directly from his model, with the various thought leaders of that movement making their admiration plain. Orbán’s is a system in which elections continue, giving the country the appearance of democracy, but it is just that: an appearance.

Or so the thinking has gone. There is some irony in the fact that, according polls, Orbán is on track to lose reelection on Sunday to a former member of his Fidesz Party, Péter Magyar, who has won voters over by denouncing the regime’s corruption and incompetence. While it is no longer a question whether the country’s democratic mechanisms are fair, Sunday will test whether they are rigged enough to withstand the overwhelming backlash Orbán is now facing. JD Vance and Vladimir Putin are, in various ways, scrambling to save their ideological ally.

If Magyar’s party, Tisza, does win on Sunday, it could become the first step in a long process of de-Orbánization, which we have a great piece up on this afternoon. Political scientist Gabriela Greilinger walks through what will have to happen to unwind the prime minister’s grip on power. He and legions of his loyalists have burrowed deep into the mechanism of Hungarian government, and extracting them will not be quick or easy.