Hungary Just Proved Illiberal Democracy Can Be Beaten at the Ballot Box

🧭 Morning Compass — Saturday, May 9, 2026

What’s the news

This morning, Péter Magyar arrived at the Hungarian parliament building in Budapest to be sworn in as prime minister, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule. Magyar’s Tisza party won a landslide in April’s elections, securing 138 seats in the 199-seat parliament on 53.6 percent of the vote — enough for a two-thirds supermajority. Voter turnout was close to 78-80 percent, the highest in Hungary’s post-communist history.

This matters beyond Hungary. Orbán built a model that Trump, Vance, and Bannon have frequently cited as a template. He rewrote the constitution, packed the courts, bought up the media, and called it “illiberal democracy.” He hosted Vance in Budapest just weeks before the election as a show of support. He lost anyway. Commentators across Europe have framed Magyar’s victory as a loss for Russia, for European far-right movements, and for the Trump administration. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on social media: “Pay attention, Donald Trump. Wannabe dictators wear out their welcome.”

But undoing the system Orbán built — from the constitution to the media landscape — will take far longer than a single election night. That is the harder question, and one worth revisiting in a few months.

I wrote about Orbán’s fall in The Planet as part of my series The Fall. Today’s inauguration is that article becoming reality. You can read that piece here:

Hungary's Victory Is Real. And So Are the Lessons Trump Will Draw Before the Midterms.

Britain’s political landscape fragmented overnight in ways that will take months to understand fully. Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, made big gains across working-class English towns that once belonged to Labour. But the story is larger than that. Political scientist Tim Bale described the results as less a patchwork and more a “pointillist painting.” Britain now effectively has seven significant competing forces: Labour, Conservatives, Reform, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the Scottish National Party, and Plaid Cymru in Wales. Some analysts argue the traditional two-party system looks broken, possibly for good. Labour lost control of councils it has held for decades. Keir Starmer said he takes responsibility and will not resign. Nigel Farage said Starmer would be lucky to survive until summer. The Greens are on track for their strongest local election result ever. The Liberal Democrats quietly gained. No single party has a national majority anywhere close to comfort.

The redistricting war in America moved decisively against Democrats yesterday. The Virginia Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved constitutional amendment — one that would have authorized a partisan redraw of congressional districts mid-decade — in a 4-3 decision, ruling that the Democratic-led legislature made procedural errors when placing it on the ballot. Virginia voters had approved the constitutional amendment by about 52 to 48 percent in April. The court invalidated the amendment, effectively nullifying the vote. Taken together with recent moves in other states and a series of Supreme Court decisions that have weakened the Voting Rights Act over the past decade, the decision could contribute to a meaningful structural advantage for Republicans in the House map before a single midterm vote is cast. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the move unprecedented and undemocratic.

ABC has accused the Federal Communications Commission of violating its free speech rights, potentially setting the stage for a protracted legal battle with the Trump administration. The dispute centers on “The View” and whether it should be subject to equal-time rules for political candidates. The View has held a bona fide news exemption from equal-time rules since 2002. The FCC is now revisiting that exemption. The FCC also took the highly unusual step of reviewing the licenses of all eight of ABC’s owned local stations years before they expire. ABC’s filing pointed out the obvious: the FCC is investigating talk shows critical of Trump while leaving conservative radio hosts like Glenn Beck and Mark Levin entirely alone. The filing noted specifically that these inquiries come before the midterm elections. This is not about equal time. It is about which voices are allowed to be heard before November.

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The Trump administration is pushing national park managers to dramatically scale back hunting restrictions across 55 sites in the lower 48 states, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. Changes already implemented include allowing vehicles to retrieve killed animals and hunting along trails. A former Yellowstone superintendent asked the relevant question: “This was never a big issue. I’d love to know the problem we’re trying to solve.” A former head of the NPS biological resources department was more direct: “I don’t want to take my young grandchildren to a park unit only to have a hunter drag a gutted elk they shot across a visitor center parking lot.”

Good news from space. The European Space Agency and Japan’s JAXA have signed an agreement to jointly send a spacecraft to accompany asteroid Apophis during its exceptionally close flyby of Earth in April 2029. Apophis, roughly 375 meters across, will pass just 32,000 kilometers above Earth’s surface, closer than many satellites in orbit. There is no risk of impact. What scientists want to watch is how Earth’s gravity reshapes the asteroid as it passes. Around two billion people across much of Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia will be able to see it with the naked eye. Mark April 13, 2029, on your calendar.

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What to watch today

Trump travels to Beijing next week to meet Xi Jinping. Whether an Iran deal is in place before he arrives could define the entire summit. Watch for signals from Tehran through the weekend.

Magyar’s swearing-in ceremony is taking place right now in Budapest.

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On this day

On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved the birth control pill, the first oral contraceptive available in the United States. It is one of the most consequential medical approvals in history, reshaping women’s autonomy and family planning across the twentieth century.

Today in Budapest, a different kind of choice is being ratified — the choice of Hungarian voters to take their country back from a leader who had made himself very difficult to remove. Two moments, 66 years apart, both about what people can choose for themselves.

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What I wrote

Two Birthdays Today: Attenborough at 100 and One Year of Daybreak Notes & Beans

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What I captured

Oslo hides its history in plain sight. This wooden house, probably built in the mid-nineteenth century, stands on a street corner surrounded by concrete apartment blocks from the 1970s and 1980s. It is tiny by comparison. It does not care. It has been there longer than anything around it and will probably outlast most of what surrounds it too. The mural promotes the work of Doctors without Borders; their excellent work is too valuable to be cut off from this image, even though it is, aesthetically, a questionable mix of styles.

I converted the photo into a pen-and-ink sketch. I do this often. Color can be a distraction — it pulls the eye toward surfaces rather than structure. In black and white, you see how something is built. The lines, the proportions, the craftsmanship. Sometimes the world is simply better this way.

These wooden houses are one of the reasons I love Oslo. You turn a corner and find a century and a half of history standing between the supermarket and the parking garage. Nobody makes a fuss about it. It is just there.

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What I’m working on

Today, I am writing the next installment of Trail of Tides in The Curious Wanderer — a practical guide to organizing a walk along Portugal’s Fisherman’s Trail, for anyone thinking of doing it themselves.

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And I would like to know

Orbán built his model over 16 years and lost it in one election. Which leader currently in power do you most hope will face a similar reckoning at the ballot box?

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You just read the Morning Compass — a daily read that arrives while you are still on your first coffee, tells you what happened overnight, what to watch today, and gives you something worth talking about.

More is also where the rest of the story lands. The follow-ups that don’t fit Daybreak Notes & Beans. The deeper dives. The reader questions that deserve a real answer. The personal moments and the European perspective on what Americans are living through. If that layer of the work matters to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber:

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Still here?

I found this video for you, produced by BBC Earth, in collaboration with King Charles, to celebrate Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday.

Just in case you missed it while reading this newsletter:

Notes and further reading

Hungary inauguration: Washington Post, Al Jazeera

UK election results: BBC, AP, The Conversation

Virginia redistricting ruling: NPR, CNBC, PBS NewsHour

ABC vs FCC: NPR, CNN, Philadelphia Inquirer

National parks hunting: AP, PBS NewsHour

Apophis mission: ESA, NASA, Phys.org