REVENGE OF THE ELEPHANTS: Millionaire big-game hunter stomped to death

Elephants graze in Gabon. (photo: Steeve Jordan/AFP/Getty Images)

Victim's extensive trophy collection included elephants and lions 

Marina Dunbar / Guardian UK

April 25, 2026  

US Millionaire Big-Game Hunter Dies After Being Crushed by Elephants

An American millionaire big-game hunter has died after being crushed by a group of elephants during a hunting expedition in Gabon.

Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting yellow-backed duiker, an antelope species, in the central African country of Gabon when the incident occurred last Friday. While in the Lope-Okanda rainforest, he and his guide unexpectedly came across five female elephants accompanied by a calf.

Originally from Lodi, California, Dosio had built an extensive collection of hunting trophies over the years, including animals such as elephants and lions. He was reportedly a familiar name within the Sacramento Safari Club.

According to the Daily Mail, safari operator Collect Africa confirmed the death of its client. The company also reported that the professional hunter guiding Dosio sustained serious injuries during the encounter.

Reflecting on Dosio’s life, a retired hunter who knew him shared with the UK outlet: “Ernie has been hunting since he could hold a rifle and has many trophies from Africa and the US. Although many disagree with big-game hunting, all Ernie’s hunts were strictly licensed and above board and were registered as conservation in culling animal numbers.”

The same source, based in Cape Town, described the incident as the elephants being “surprised” by Dosio and his guide’s presence.

Dosio was the owner of Pacific AgriLands Inc, a company managing 12,000 acres of vineyard land in Modesto, as well as offering services and equipment financing to wine producers. Officials from the US embassy in Gabon are now coordinating the return of his remains to California, the Mail reported.

Gabon’s forests are known to shelter approximately 95,000 forest elephants, most of the species’ global population, which are considered highly endangered.

Every year, clients of the trophy-hunting industry claim the lives of tens of thousands of wild animals across the world. Legal hunting tours in Africa are popular with some wealthy Americans, including Donald Trump Jr, who was pictured holding a severed elephant’s tail more than a decade ago.

International trophy hunting is a multimillion-dollar industry. In South Africa, estimates for the industry’s worth range from $100m in 2005, to $68m in 2012, and $120m in 2015, according to the EMS Foundation.

During his first presidential term, Donald Trump created a controversial wildlife advisory board to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinoceroses. The board was disbanded in 2020 after lawsuits alleging it was an illegal, biased panel stacked with trophy hunters rather than conservationists, who worked to promote the economic benefits of big game hunting.

Last year, another American game hunter was killed by a buffalo he was stalking during a hunting expedition in South Africa.

Designed to illustrate Republicans discouraging voting, this is the best image of an elephant crushing a person we could find without resorting to AI.  We trust the ability of our discerning readers to substitute a millionaire.

What Is May Day Strong, the ‘No Work, No School, No Shopping’ Protests Against Trump?

 Protestors march during a nationwide shutdown demonstration against ICE in Minneapolis in January. (photo: Getty)

 

 More than 3,500 actions across the country – from street protests to walkouts – “under the banner of workers over billionaires, taxing the rich, demanding ICE out, money for people not wars, and expanding democracy”

 

 Kim Kelly / Guardian UK

 22 April 26

Anyone who attended one of the 3,000 No Kings protests in March might have learned of the latest effort to protest against Trump administration policies: May Day Strong.

The single-day protest on 1 May is taking its cue from the massive day of action that shut down Minneapolis in January by asking Americans not to shop, work or go to school. Rallies, marches and teach-ins will also take place across the country.

“The labor movement in our country cannot advance while ignoring the assault on democracy,” said Neidi Dominguez, founding executive director of Organized Power in Numbers and executive team member of May Day Strong.

“And the pro-democracy movement can’t ask working people to defend abstract principles while they can’t afford housing, paying bills or accessing healthcare. We need a national movement that does both. That’s why labor and community organizations are throwing down hard this May 1.”

What is May Day Strong?

Organizers are expecting more than 3,500 actions across the country – from street protests to walkouts – “under the banner of workers over billionaires, taxing the rich, demanding ICE out, money for people not wars, and expanding democracy”, said Dominguez.

Since 2024, the May Day Strong coalition has been hosting Solidarity School organizing trainings, sharing toolkits and encouraging people to set up their own May Day events. The labor unions involved are already using their institutional muscle to help, too: the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) successfully fought to have 1 May declared a “day of civic action” in the city, and the National Education Association (NEA) has posted a handy May Day planning guide on its website.

The goal is “a nationwide day of economic disruption”, organizers said – by bringing business as usual to a halt, protesters will show how powerful the working class can be when it flexes its collective muscle.

Who is organizing May Day Strong?

The May Day Strong coalition is made up of a formidable list of unions, Democratic Socialists of America chapters, pro-democracy groups such as Indivisible (who have jumped on board to amplify the May Day message), and labor, racial justice, anti-war, pro-democracy, climate justice, immigrant rights and reproductive justice organizations.

That intersectional approach is a core aspect of their work, Dominguez said: “There’s more of us than there are of them. We just have to organize ourselves together.”

Where can I find May Day Strong events in my area?

May Day Strong’s website has a searchable map to help people find May Day actions and sign up to host their own. Signing the May Day pledge is another way to get connected and receive more information about events.

Is it a general strike (and does that matter)?

No – at least not in 2026. “A general strike is basically a work stoppage that paralyzes multiple major industries,” said Eric Blanc, an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University.

That’s not what May Day Strong is planning for this year. As many organizers have noted, it will take years to organize a full-on, sustained general strike in the US – which is why 2028 has emerged as a target date.

Rather, May Day Strong organizers are amplifying the call for “no work, no school, no shopping” that anchored Minnesota’s Day of Truth and Freedom on 23 January, bringing millions of protesters out to demand an end to ICE’s occupation in their cities.

General strikes are rare in the US, though historically they have been one of organized labor’s most powerful tools. In 1877, railroad workers launched a strike that paralyzed the nation; in 1919, workers in Seattle shut down the city for five days. Minneapolis saw its own general strike in 1934, when unionized truck drivers brought the city to a standstill and lit a signal fire for other workers across the midwest to organize.

However, the passage of the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act essentially outlawed the general strike and severely limited workers’ ability to strike in solidarity with one another. The US hasn’t seen a true general strike since.

The tactic remains a potent lever for political change in other countries, such as India and Italy. “Experience across the world suggests that it may take such an action – or at least the credible threat of one – to reverse authoritarianism in the US,” said Blanc.

What is the May Day 2028 general strike?

That inconvenient piece of anti-labor legislation is exactly why the United Auto Workers’ call for a May Day general strike in 2028 has generated so much excitement. The union and its lawyers are well aware of those legal constraints, which is why they had to find a loophole.

In April 2024, Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, publicly called on all unions, across industries and sectors, to align their contract expiration dates for 1 May 2028. If those unions’ contracts expire, so do the no-strike clauses that many contain; with no contract, there’s nothing stopping members from going on strike. If it just so happens that thousands – or millions – of workers find themselves in that situation on the same day, well, there’s not much the law can do to stop it.

Several major unions, including the CTU, the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Postal Workers Union, have already pledged to join them. The May Day Strong coalition is also working to support the 2028 general strike by giving non-union organizations a way to get their members ready to participate.

“The fact is: without workers, the world stops running,” Fain wrote in an op-ed for In These Times. “A successful general strike is going to take time, mass coordination, and a whole lot of work by the labor movement. As working people, we must come together. We can no longer allow corporations, politicians and borders to divide us.”

What is the history behind May Day?

May Day, or International Workers’ Day, was first celebrated in the US in 1886, when anarchist labor organizers Lucy and Albert Parsons led 300,000 striking workers in Chicago on the first American May Day parade. While the first of May has a much older history rooted in ancient pagan rites and the changing seasons, in a political context it has since become known as a global day of celebration, struggle and remembrance for the working class.

May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and is celebrated informally in many others, marked by marches, parades, strikes and demonstrations. However, in the US, 1 May is designated “Loyalty Day”; the workers’ holiday, Labor Day, has been relegated to the first Monday in September. And, yes, the lack of recognition for May Day is very much intentional. 

This has been a source of frustration for labor’s left flank for decades, and the recently renewed focus on 1 May as a day of collective action nods to labor’s history as well as its future.

As Fain said: “It’s time we reclaimed May Day for the working class.”

Come celebrate!  Comc protest!  Your country needs you to step up.

Trump 'tried to use nuclear codes but was stopped by military chief'

I'm the damn king.  Just give me the damn button.

Trump also excluded from Situation Room during Iran rescue mission due to "explosive temperament."

Story by Tannur Anders & Hannah Broughton

The Mirror US

U.S. President Donald Trump was denied access to his nation's nuclear codes by a high-ranking U.S. military official, according to explosive reports.

Retired CIA analyst Larry Johnson claimed on the popular YouTube program Judging Freedom that during an emergency meeting on Saturday, Trump attempted to access the nuclear codes.

"One report coming out of that meeting at the White House is that Trump wanted to... use the nuclear codes, and General Dan Caine stood up and said 'No'. He invoked his privilege as the head of the military, so to speak. It was apparently quite a blow-up.  

There's some very bizarre things going on in DC." It comes amid growing concern about the president's erratic behavior - just days ago, Trump made a disturbing sex comment on stage that stunned his audience into silence.

The nuclear code allegations have not been verified, and it remains unclear what purpose the nuclear codes alone would serve if accessed. 

However, this follows reports that Trump was excluded from the Situation Room by military advisors during a crucial Iran rescue mission.

The U.S. President was allegedly kept out of deliberations due to worries about his explosive temperament. Senior administration officials feared his unpredictability could jeopardize the operation.

After the destruction of a US aircraft by Iranian forces earlier this month, Trump reportedly spent hours shouting at staff in the West Wing while being tormented by recollections of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis.

The U.S. has been engaged in conflict with Iran since February 28, when combined US-Israeli airstrikes were launched on multiple strategic Iranian targets. Iran retaliated by striking locations throughout the Middle East, throwing the region into turmoil, and shutting down the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane.

A temporary ceasefire has been established, but no lasting peace agreement has been secured. Meanwhile, the possibility of meaningful peace talks still hangs in the balance.

Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and parliament speaker, wrote in a post on X early Tuesday that “We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats,” and the Islamic Republic has been preparing “to reveal new cards on the battlefield.”

Iran, while not formally acknowledged as a nuclear-armed nation, is believed to possess uranium enrichment technology that could facilitate nuclear weapons development. It remains uncertain if or for what purpose the US nuclear codes would be deployed.

The Donald is shooting himself in the head with increasing frequency.

Donald Trump vs. Jesus Christ

Attribution: Drew Sheneman

Presenting Thin-Skinned Trump and His Temper Tantrums 

 

by Daily Kos Staff

Staff

Sunday, April 19, 2026 at 10:00:00a PDT

The president of the United States is feuding with the pope—and the pope is winning.

After President Donald Trump called Pope Leo XIV “WEAK on Crime” in a lengthy Truth Social post Sunday, the pope shot back by declaring, “I’m not afraid of the Trump administration.”

Unsurprisingly, that left Trump—who has a habit of likening himself to Jesus Christ—quite upset. So here are some of our favorite religion-related cartoons making fun of thin-skinned Trump and his temper tantrums. 

---

Woke pope, by Clay Jones

Originally published April 15.

Attribution: Clay Jones

 

Dr. Trump, by Keefknight

Originally published April 15.

Attribution: Keefknight

 

 

Well, what do you know?, by Pedro Molina

Originally published April 16.

Attribution: Pedro Molina/Tribune Content Agency

 

 

Miracle man, by Drew Sheneman

Originally published April 16.

Attribution: Drew Sheneman/Tribune Content Agency

 

Trump is Seriously, Frighteningly, Utterly, and Completely Losing His Mind

     President Donald Trump. (photo: Getty)

 

"He’s a clear and present danger to the United States and the world."

 

Robert Reich / Substack

17 April 26

Reader Supported News

It’s a catastrophe on the way to becoming a cataclysm.

Trump is rapidly going stark-raving mad. He’s a clear and present danger to the United States and the world.

Yesterday he lashed out at The New York Times after its chief White House correspondent questioned his mental health and stability and pointed to his “erratic behavior and extreme comments.”

“HAVE THEY NO SHAME? HAVE THEY NO SENSE OF DECENCY?” Trump posted in CAPITAL LETTERS about the Times, inadvertently echoing the famous words of Joseph Welch when standing up to Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Trump went on to take issue with the Times’s coverage of his war in Iran rather than his mental state, as if to prove the Times’s point.

He keeps saying he’s “won” the war with Iran, although he’s never said what “winning” means. At one moment his goal is to free Iran’s people. At another, it’s to end Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. At another, to destroy Iran’s missiles. At another, to achieve “regime change.” At another, to open the Strait of Hormuz (which was open before Trump started his war). At another, he says he’ll know the U.S. military operation in Iran is over when he feels it "[in] my bones.”

He can’t even stay on the same subject for more than a few minutes. In the middle of a high-level Cabinet meeting about the war, he spends five minutes talking about his preference for Sharpie pens. He interrupts another Iran war update to praise the White House drapes.

He threatens that if Iran doesn’t reopen the strait, “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Then he says America doesn’t need the strait reopened. Then he says: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

He calls the Pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” because the Pope wants peace. He posts an AI-generated picture of himself as Jesus, then says he was only depicting himself as a physician.

He won’t give up on his illegal and dangerous (for the economy) criminal investigation of Fed Chief Jerome Powell, claiming it’s not just about Powell’s renovations at the Fed but also a “probe on incompetence,” adding he’ll fire Powell if he doesn’t resign after his term as chair ends.

He claims that the United States “needs” Greenland. He confuses Greenland with Iceland. He says whales are being killed by windmills. He claims that he won all 50 states in 2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016. He says the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed. He goes on an eight-minute ramble about poisonous snakes in Peru. He boasts of ending a fictional war between Cambodia and Armenia.

After Robert Mueller’s death, he says, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” He blames the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle on “the anger [Rob Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” After Joe Biden is diagnosed with an aggressive form of Stage 4 prostate cancer, Trump says, “I’m surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to Stage 9, that’s a long time” (there is no Stage 9 cancer).

He’s been losing it for a while now, but in the last few months it’s become far worse.

In 2017, 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals concluded in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump that Trump’s mental condition posed a “clear and present danger” to the nation.

In 2021, members of Trump’s own Cabinet — horrified by the January 6, 2021, violence at the Capitol and Trump’s lack of urgency in stopping it — discussed whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office due to mental incompetence.

During his 2024 campaign, he attacked Kamala Harris and then went into the stratosphere of his bonkers mind:

“She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s – and I own a big building there – it’s no – I shouldn’t talk about this, but that’s OK, I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world – sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson, they say, was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?”

It’s no longer possible to overlook his conspiracy-obsessed paranoia, his uncontrolled rage, his emotional volatility, his delusional claims, his vengeful rantings, his foul-mouthed posturing, his increasing detachment from reality.

Yet his Cabinet members and aides keep their heads down. Republican members of Congress pretend not to notice. His billionaire supporters dare not speak of his rapid decline. The media tries to “sanewash” his growing incoherence.

But some voices on the right — people who have long been supporters of Trump — have had enough.

Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s civilization is “not tough rhetoric, it’s insanity.” Far-right podcaster Candace Owens calls him “a genocidal lunatic.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones says Trump “does babble and sounds like the brain’s not doing too hot.” A White House lawyer in Trump’s first term, Ty Cobb, says Trump is “clearly insane.” Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham says “he’s clearly not well.”

The public is catching on. Fully 61 percent of Americans think he’s become more erratic with age, while just 45 percent say he is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges” (down from 54 percent in 2023).

For the good of the nation and the world, it’s time we face the reality: The most powerful man in the world does not have the mental capacity to do the job. Donald Trump — who has a family history of dementia — is increasingly unhinged.

We are all endangered. What happens if, in a demented rage, he hurls a nuclear bomb? Who is watching the “football” with the nuclear codes? Who’s ready to stop him to save the world?

Don’t wait. Impeach him now.

Captain Bone Spurs has become a Bonehead.

The Pope Holds His Own Against Trump

   'Pope Leo XIV is a measured, soft-spoken man of God whose holy mission is peace and unity.' (photo: Getty)

“I have no fear of the Trump administration, nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel." 

Dan Rather / Steady 

16 April 26

 

One might think an American pope would be good for an American president. After all, Catholicism is having a moment here, with conversions on the rise, especially among young people. More than half of American Catholics voted for Donald Trump in the last election. The vice president is Catholic, as is the secretary of state, and the first lady.

But forget all that. Nothing matters if Trump feels slighted. And right now, he is acting like a toddler in timeout.

These two men could not be more different. Pope Leo XIV is a measured, soft-spoken man of God whose holy mission is peace and unity. Trump is a bombastic narcissist, who is convinced peace can best be achieved through bombing — and is a constant divider, not a unifier.

Leo, who had stayed above the political fray since becoming pope last May, began to shift his stance with an impassioned speech following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” he told ambassadors to the Vatican. U.S. officials took it as a direct challenge to the Trump administration.

Soon after, Pentagon officials demanded a meeting with Vatican representatives, telling them the U.S. has the military might to do whatever it wants and that the Catholic Church had better get on its side, according to The Free Press.

The Catholic Church did not heed that threat. Instead, Leo issued appeals for peace, but as the war with Iran escalated, so did his criticism. On April 7, he took the rare step of calling out a political leader after Trump’s social media threat to wipe out “a whole civilization,” calling the sentiment “truly unacceptable.”

On Friday, Leo posted a direct condemnation on social media. “Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously… God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

During an evening prayer service at the Vatican on Saturday, the pope called out the “delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive… Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life,” he said.

The subject of his pointed remarks wasted little time responding.

In a lengthy and scathing social media rant on Sunday, Trump retorted, “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy…” Later telling reporters, “I’m not a big fan.”

Because everything in his world revolves around Trump, he suggested that the only reason Leo was even elected pope is “because he was an American, and [the Vatican] thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”

Trump followed his diatribe by posting an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ healing the sick. It has since been taken down.

In a hastily arranged photo op at the White House, the president admitted he posted the photo but said it had no messianic meaning. With a straight face, he said it depicted him as a doctor.

Democrats have long decried the president’s mental status, and now Republicans are joining in, some even suggesting he needs to be removed from office. After his genocidal “whole civilization” post, The New York Times wrote, “… never in modern times has the stability of a president been so publicly and forensically debated — and with such profound consequences.”

On Monday, during the first leg of a 10-day trip to locations in Africa that have been hard hit by the loss of U.S. aid, Pope Leo told reporters, “I have no fear of the Trump administration, nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel. And that’s what I believe I am called here to do.”

When asked specifically about Trump’s Truth Social post, he said, “It’s ironic — the name of the site itself. Say no more.”

“The message of the Gospel is very clear: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’... Too many people are suffering today, too many innocent people have been killed, and I believe someone must stand up and say that there is a better way,” he added.

Quite the irony — Trump, who for years actively campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, is now attacking the pope for advocating peace.

Trump has picked a fight with one of the holiest and most popular men in the world, who represents 1.4 billion Catholics, 53 million of whom are American. At the same time, he publicly embraced one of today’s longest-reigning authoritarians, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Trump and Orbán have been members of a mutual admiration society since the president’s first administration. The Hungarian leader lent Trump support and his playbook. Many of Orbán’s authoritarian tactics, including manipulating the media, stacking the judiciary, and attempting to control elections, have been embraced and employed by the president.

Trump dispatched the vice president to Hungary last week, a trip paid for by the American taxpayer, to prop up his old friend. At a campaign rally in Budapest, JD Vance said, without irony, that he was there, “Because what the United States and Hungary together represent under Viktor’s leadership and under President Trump’s is the defense of Western civilization.”

As if sending the Vice President of the United States to campaign for a foreign strongman wasn’t enough, Trump joined the rally via speakerphone, saying, “I love Hungary and I love Viktor!”

Vance’s attempt at help fell flat. On Sunday, after 16 years of autocratic rule, the Hungarian people said enough. Orbán was trounced in a landslide by Péter Magyar. The victory was so decisive, Orbán didn’t even try to contest the election and conceded just hours after the polls closed.

Although sometimes flawed, moral authority has been an essential component of American strength and leadership for 250 years. Time and again, Trump’s behavior and actions have severely damaged that claim at home and abroad. Now, with what he has done in the cases of Pope Leo and Viktor Orbán, he has deepened the damage.

If Viktor Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.

  Peter Magyar waves a flag. (photo: Bernadett Szabo/Reuters)

Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement

Anne Applebaum / The Atlantic

April 14, 2026 

 

     Péter Magyar, the opposition leader and likely next Hungarian prime minister. (photo: Denes Erdos/AP)

In the end, the defeat of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, required not just an ordinary election campaign or new messaging but rather the construction of a broad, diverse, and patriotic grassroots social movement. And by building exactly that, Hungary’s opposition changed politics around the world.

Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement, as well as the belief—also present in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric—that illiberal parties are somehow destined not just to win but to hold power forever, because they have the support of the “real” people. 

As it turns out, history doesn’t work like that. “Real” people grow tired of their rulers. Old ideas become stale. Younger people question orthodoxy. Illiberalism leads to corruption. And if Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.

Péter Magyar, the opposition leader and likely next Hungarian prime minister, has now won by a substantial margin, giving him and his party, Tisza, a constitutional majority. 

To do so, they had to overcome obstacles not usually present in European democracies. After 16 years of what Orbán himself described as an illiberal regime, the Hungarian leader’s political party, Fidesz, had come to control much of the judiciary, bureaucracy, and universities, as well as a group of oligarchic companies that in turn controlled a good chunk of the economy.

Orbán used his control of the state to build an extraordinary web of international illiberal and far-right supporters, and funding mechanisms to support some of them. In the last weeks of the campaign, these friends and beneficiaries rallied round. Orbán received visits or verbal support from Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, Benjamin Netanyahu, Marine Le Pen (the leader of the French far right), Alice Weidel (the leader of the German far right), and other illiberal leaders from Argentina, Poland, Slovakia, Brazil, and more. Both Hungarian and American news organizations reported that a Russian intelligence team had set up in Budapest to amplify Orbán’s social-media campaign, and perhaps to stage provocations.

By contrast, Magyar had very little access to Hungarian media, the overwhelming majority of which is owned either by the state or by Fidesz oligarchs. He and his party had limited access even to billboard space, both because they had less money than the ruling party and because many advertising spaces are controlled by the government. Tisza leaders and supporters faced personal obstacles as well. A year ago, I met a Tisza politician who told me that his wife had lost her job and his friends began to stay away after he announced his support for Magyar. Tisza’s database was at one point hacked and posted online, apparently to encourage harassment of party members. Even three weeks ago, many Tisza leaders in Budapest would speak only off the record.

Magyar and his team fought back on the ground. Knowing he could not win if he stuck to Budapest and other large cities, Magyar has been traveling the country since 2024, visiting small towns and villages, many more than once. In the last few days of the campaign, he was holding five or six election meetings every day. He avoided the themes that Orbán chose to promote—global politics, the war in Ukraine, the conspiracy that Ukraine was somehow colluding against or might even invade Hungary—and focused his campaign speeches and social media on the economy, health care, and schools. 

As a former member of Fidesz himself, he was able to speak with extra conviction about Fidesz’s corruption. He portrayed himself as a part of the European, democratic, law-abiding center-right. He waved a lot of Hungarian flags, as did his supporters.

Despite enormous restrictions and both financial and political pressure, the tiny number of journalists who were still able to report in Hungary also made a difference. In the past few weeks, the investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, along with his colleagues at the website Direkt26, one of the few independent outlets in the country, patiently debunked Orbán’s anti-Ukrainian propaganda, producing leaked transcripts and audio that revealed Orbán and his foreign minister colluding with Putin and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. 

These tapes exposed what Panyi described to me as the “big lie that Orbán was a sovereigntist prime minister.” Indeed: Orbán boasted and talked a big game about Hungarian traditions and Hungarian nationalism, but when he spoke on the phone with the Russian leader, he described himself as a mouse and Putin as a lion. For years Orbán has claimed to be fighting shadowy foreign forces—George Soros, the European Union, migrants—but in fact he was himself dependent on foreigners all along.

Those stories resonated, especially with younger Hungarians. At a rock concert in Heroes’ Square in central Budapest on Friday, tens of thousands of them started chanting “Russians, go home”—the same chant that their grandparents used when Soviet soldiers invaded their country in 1956.

Although results are not final, Tisza appears to have won more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. That would give Magyar a constitutional majority that should allow him to pick apart some of the damage that Orbán has done to the Hungarian constitution and to public life. In his victory speech, he called for the resignation of the president, the prosecutor general, the president of the constitutional court, and other institutions. 

He said he would rejoin the European legal system. In response, according to one witness, Hungarians at his rally chanted, “Europe, Europe, Europe.”

Nobody is pretending this will be easy. Fidesz still dominates many Hungarian institutions and businesses, and the party’s friends and supporters will do their best to undermine a Tisza government. Orbán also leaves behind a fiscal mess, which the analyst Dalibor Rohac suggests Orbán might be happy to abandon while plotting his comeback. “Letting the opposition deal with the economic fallout of the last 16 years might well facilitate Orbán’s return to power in the future,” Rohac wrote earlier this week. 

Some in the opposition are still expecting dirty tricks in the next days and weeks, before Orbán formally hands over power.

But whatever happens next, this election represents a real turning point. For most European governments, this result is a relief: We can’t know yet what kind of government Tisza will create, but it won’t be one that functions as Russia’s puppet in Europe, blocking EU funding for Ukraine or European sanctions on Russia. Nor will it be a regime that serves as a model for Americans or Europeans who want to capture their own states, or take apart their own checks and balances, or impose their own illiberal ideologies on people who don’t accept them.

 "For many Hungarians, the election was a referendum on Orbán’s model." (photo: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg/Getty Images)