The United States is currently in the midst of an unprecedented executive power grab initiated by President Trump and executed by officials tied to Project 2025 and others from the pro-Trump “think tank” America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Also facilitating this power grab is billionaire Elon Musk and his very young and inexperienced team from the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
These unprecedented moves, which include purging the federal workforce, shutting down agencies such as USAID, and targeting the civil rights of LGBTQ+, Black people, and other communities, share many parallels with the tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes constructed in Hungary by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and in Russia by President Vladimir Putin.
Trump is quite fond of both Orbán and Putin. Trump has met Orbán on many occasions since their first official meeting in May 2019, with Trump most recently inviting him to his personal residence at Mar-a-lago in December 2024 and to the inauguration. Trump has praised Orbán’s anti-democratic restructuring of Hungary, which has included the decimation of a free press, crackdowns on civil society, and attacks on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. Additionally, Orbán, and figures linked to his government, have deep ties to the groups behind Project 2025, which Trump is ruthlessly implementing (see GPAHE reporting on Orbán’s relations to Heritage and other Project 2025 groups here, here, and here). The European Parliament’s designation of Hungary as an “electoral autocracy” is clearly not a problem for Trump.
Both Trump and Musk reportedly have ties to Putin. Trump has repeatedly praised the dictator, including stating on March 2, 2022, that Putin was a “genius” and that putting 200,000 soldiers on the border prior to the invasion of Ukraine was one “hell of a way to negotiate.” For Musk’s part, The Washington Post reported on October 25, 2024, that he had been in regular contact with the Kremlin since late 2022.
Now Trump appears to be following the Orbán and Putin playbooks as he reshapes the U.S. in an authoritarian direction. Here are examples of how Trump’s moves parallel these authoritarian regimes:
- Attacking a Free Press: Trump has moved to dismantle independent media by filing lawsuits against major news outlets that have been critical of him, a tactic that uses the legal system to intimidate critics. He has called for CBS and its news program “60 Minutes” to be “terminated,” and his new FCC head demanded copies of an interview the program ran with Kamala Harris. Trump has nominated loyalist, election-denier Kari Lake as the head of the state-run Voice of America (VOA), and launched two separate investigations into the partially publicly-funded news outlets, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), one by Musk’s “DOGE” Subcommittee for “systemically biased news coverage” and another by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Brendan Carr, who has called for the organizations to be defunded. On January 31, 2025, the Pentagon stated that they would be “rotating” out their in-house press corps, replacing NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio, and Politico with pro-Trump outlets Breitbart and One America News Network, both known for spreading hate and conspiracy theories. Nearly every authoritarian attacks and attempts to control the independent media and abolish freedom of the press. In Russia, much of the media is state-run and serves as a propaganda tool for Putin’s regime, while independent, critical media and journalists have been subjected to harassment, state repression, and even murder. Orbán took a different strategy, infamously using allied oligarchs with close ties to his party Fidesz to purchase opposition media, and either reorient them towards his agenda, or close them altogether. It is estimated that the Hungarian state now controls nearly 50 percent of all influential media in the country.
- Controlling the online space: Despite originally calling for TikTok to either be sold to a U.S.-based company or blocked in the United States, Trump now claims that he plans to create a sovereign wealth fund which might purchase TikTok–presumably since the company has openly thanked Trump for saving them. Wealthy owners of tech platforms such as Twitter’s Elon Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have rallied around Trump and his agenda and turned their platforms into a haven for hate speech and disinformation. Bringing a third massive social media platform under his direct influence would not only provide Trump with powerful tools to affect the media narrative, but also allow hateful disinformation to flourish and antidemocratic narratives to reign. In Russia, the social media sites owned by those who cooperate with Russian authorities, such as Odnaklassniki (OK) and VKontakte (VK), are permitted to exist, while others, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have been banned in the country for their reluctance to censor users critical of the war in Ukraine. Kremlin-linked groups regularly use bots on both foreign and domestic platforms to influence public opinion according to their narrative. The Hungarian regime predominantly uses social media to disseminate its propaganda and misinformation, which may benefit as these companies abandon content moderation. (see GPAHE reporting on how Facebook promoted the antidemocratic content of Orbán and others here.)
- Demonizing immigrants and instituting anti-immigrant policies: Trump has weaponized the government to conduct high-profile raids and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country, including those who have lived peacefully in the country for decades, demonizing them as “criminals,” and declaring a state of emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border. He has stated his intention to house deportees in a former terrorist prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and is considering the extremely dangerous CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador. He has also shut down certain legal routes to immigration, suspended the U.S. refugee resettlement program, and attempted to overturn birthright citizenship. He also declared that drug cartels would be recharacterized as “terrorist organizations” opening a path to target anyone accused of being associated with the gangs, however peripherally. Authoritarian regimes frequently label immigrants as an inherent danger to their countries in order to justify harsh, rights-restricting policies. Orbán infamously used the 2015 “migration crisis,” spurred by Syrians fleeing war, to justify his power grabs, militarization of the border, and attacks on pro-migrant NGOs, and in July 2022 claimed that he wanted to prevent Hungary from becoming a “mixed-race” country. In a similar vein, Trump has said that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
- Demonizing the LGBTQ+ community and eroding minority rights: Like a great many authoritarians before him, Trump has scapegoated minorities, especially the LGBTQ+ community, and is now restricting their rights as part of his push to expand executive powers.Trump has abolished diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs throughout the federal government and deleted pages related to LGBTQ+ issues from executive branch websites. He has cancelled the celebration of holidays dedicated to inclusivity, including MLK Day, ended the Biden administration’s interpretation of the Title IX rule, which previously prevented discrimination against students based on their gender identity or sexual orientation, and launched investigations into schools that promote inclusive policies for trans students (see GPAHE’s reporting on the actions taken by Trump’s Department of Education here). LGBTQ+ rights are a common target for modern day authoritarians, and both Orbán and Putin have severely restricted the community’s rights. Russia, for example, has a law that bans mentions of LGBTQ+ individuals in media or public support for their causes, which the Russian government refers to as “propaganda of non-traditional relationships,” and used a court ban of the “LGBT movement” under the guise of it being “extremist” to arrest LGBTQ+ people around the country. In Hungary, a law similar to Russia’s was passed in 2021 banning “homosexual and transexual propaganda,” which has been challenged in the European Union’s courts. In 2018, the government removed accreditation for courses on gender studies, and passed a raft of measures targeting the rights of the trans community.
- Punishing enemies: Trump has aggressively gone after officials that were involved in efforts to hold him accountable for his actions during the January 6 Capitol insurrection and other investigations into his possible wrongdoing. His administration has fired FBI investigators active on Jan. 6 cases, demanded lists of those who were involved, and punished opponents such as John Bolton and Anthony Fauci, by removing their protective details, and has threatened to jail members of the January 6 Congressional Select Committee. Both Orbán and Putin frequently use terms such as “Hungarophobes” and “Russophobes” in order to discredit critics of their anti-democratic agendas (see GPAHE’s previous reporting on this here). In Russia, Putin’s government has a long history of misappropriating laws outlawing extremist groups and content in order to discredit and outlaw individuals and groups associated with the political opposition such as Alexey Navalny, films critical of aspects of Russian history such as “The Death of Stalin,” and even the social media company Meta which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. Hungary has legislation that allows it to impose a prison term of up to three years on politicians that accept foreign funds, and are thus subversive, in elections. It will also allow authorities to shutter civil society NGOs deemed to run afoul of the new regulations.
- Pardons: On January 20, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of those arrested or convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, including members of the Oath Keepers anti-government militia and the white supremacist Proud Boys. Also pardoned were several individuals who violently attacked police that day. Pardoning partisans who committed political crimes have a long history in the authoritarian playbook. Mussolini used the power to pardon his “Blackshirts” fascist militia. In Russia, for example, more than 5,000 former criminals were pardoned by Putin, including many with violent backgrounds, after they volunteered to join the far-right mercenary Wagner Group in their illegal war on Ukraine. One of those individuals was Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, convicted of the 2006 murder of the famous human rights investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
- Political Purges: Trump started a purge of FBI agents that worked on the Mar-a-Lago and Jan. 6 investigations and fired all of the federal government’s inspectors general. He has also decided to demote career employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and replace them with political appointees, shut down DEI offices in the federal government, and fired the employees responsible for running them. Trump has also taken to pressuring federal employees to quit their jobs in order to restructure the departments of the executive branch to his liking by forcing federal employees to return to the office from working remotely, offering buyouts to all federal employees who opt to leave their positions, and terrorizing them to give the impression that they are at risk of being fired. Purges like this are common in backsliding democracies. In Hungary, Orbán politicized many positions in the bureaucracy after returning to power in 2010, leading to an unprecedented increase in public corruption and funds going to highly partisan projects, such as pro-Orbán “think tanks” and universities (see GPAHE previous reporting here and here). In Russia, the governing party has used coercion to pressure employees working in the bureaucracy to support Putin and his allied political party United Russia.
- Targeting Human Rights NGOs: On November 21, 2024, the House of Representatives passed the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would grant the U.S. Treasury Department the ability to eliminate the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it generally deems to be supporting “terrorism.” Other authoritarian countries have taken similar moves. Both Russia and Hungary have legislation in place that targets human rights NGOs which they perceive as acting against their “national sovereignty.” In June 2018, Orbán infamously passed a “Stop Soros” law that sought to criminalize support for asylum seekers and make a target out of the philanthropic work of billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Foundation has helped finance many of the NGOs that provide these services, prompting them to leave the country. In Russia, Open Society was deemed as an “undesirable” organization in November 2015, which essentially banned them from giving grants to partners based in the country. Trump has ordered a review of all federal grants to NGOs to ensure they “align with …the goals and priorities of his administration.”
- Undermining Public Education: Trump and his Department of Education (DOE), led by officials from the pro-Trump AFPI, have stated that they would be opening up federal funding for private “charter schools” (see GPAHE’s reporting on the AFPI’s control of the Department of Education here). This move serves to undermine the public education system and promote private, Christian nationalist schools sympathetic to Project 2025 and Trump’s agenda, such as Hillsdale College’s system of private schools that teach a Christian Nationalist curriculum (see GPAHE’s reporting on Hillsdale College here). Trump has even gone so far as to consider closing the DOE completely. In Orbán’s regime, his party used the government to transfer funding away from traditional universities towards a network of far-right universities and their associated think tanks (see GPAHE’s reporting on these changes in Hungary’s education system here and here). In January 2020, Orbán and his allies reformed the curriculum of the public school system and introduced a new National Core Curriculum (NAT) to promote “patriotism” among students, which sounds eerily similar to Trump’s DOE plans to teach a “patriotic” curriculum. Hungary’s new teachings include compulsory material from nationalist and antisemitic authors from the 1930s, such as Jozsef Nyiro, a member of the fascist Arrow Cross Party and admirer of Joseph Goebbels, and Albert Wass, an antisemitic war criminal. It also includes ideological, ahistorical narratives from history that portray leaders such as Miklos Horthy who passed anti-Jewish laws in 1920 and became an ally of Adolf Hitler, in a positive light.
- USAID: Trump and Musk unilaterally, and likely illegally according to constitutional law experts, and certainly without congressional approval, are gutting the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian funding to countries around the world. This was a favorite goal of Project 2025. They argue USAID is not in line with Trump’s “America First” agenda. Authoritarians abroad frequently make enemies out of USAID and other organizations that promote democracy and human rights. In 2012, after the mass protests on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow broke out against questionable election results, the Kremlin moved to expel USAID from the country for practices they perceived as “interfering in political processes.” After Musk and Trump’s efforts to close the USAID office in Washington D.C. on February 4, 2025, officials from both Hungary and Russia welcomed the move, with Orbán stating that “the world owes a debt of gratitude to President [Trump] for uncovering and putting an end to this dark conspiracy.”
- Gutting the separation of powers: In an effort to bypass the formal separation of powers in the American Constitution, Trump has taken actions which clearly clash with Congress’ jurisdiction over the federal budget, including freezing “disbursement of all Federal financial assistance,” unilaterally attempting to dismantle USAID, an agency that provides humanitarian aid to countries abroad, and providing Musk’s agents with access to the U.S. Treasury’s payment system and other government databases. These actions are extremely concerning as they point to Trump’s attempts to destroy the separation of powers, which prevent any one branch of government from taking full control of government operations. While still in place in theory, in practice, Hungary and Russia quickly took steps to dismantle their separation of powers and give unchecked power to the executive branch. In Russia, Putin took measures not only to reign in the State Duma, the country’s legislative body, but also the independence of the judiciary and regional governors. In Hungary, this centralization came much faster. Following Orbán’s victory in the 2010 elections, his party Fidesz moved quickly to use their supermajority in the legislature to rewrite the constitution to give nearly unchecked power to the executive. He then further “reformed” the courts in March 2013 and December 2018 to remove whatever independence remained, making them answer directly to his office.
