In 2014, Orbán described what he was building in plain terms, calling Hungary an “illiberal state.”² At the time, it sounded abstract. In practice, it meant something simpler: the system would stay in place, but the uncertainty that made it work would begin to fade. That’s how you get sixteen years.
The man at the bar let that number sit for a moment before glancing back at the screen, where the coverage had shifted to Washington. The connection feels abrupt if you haven’t been watching it develop.
Donald Trump has spoken about Orbán with clear admiration, praising his approach and maintaining contact during election periods. J. D. Vance has stood beside him in Budapest, and Marco Rubio has engaged with his government. Inside The Heritage Foundation , the policy framework behind Project 2025 reflects many of the same ideas about control, loyalty, and how institutions should behave.
The connection isn’t exact, and the systems aren’t the same, but the ideas travel. In the United States, what’s taking shape is not a finished system but a set of moves happening inside something larger—more complicated, more resistant, but not immune.
At the center of that effort is a simple claim:
“The President is in charge of the federal workforce.”⁶
On paper, that reads like a structural argument. Inside the system, it changes behavior in quieter ways. If people know they can be removed more easily, they begin to make safer choices—pushing less, questioning less, staying closer to what leadership wants. Over time, that means fewer internal disagreements and makes decisions match what leadership wants more often.
You don’t have to tell people what to do if they already know what could happen if they don’t.
That’s one kind of pressure.
Around the same time, inspectors general across multiple agencies were removed—at least seventeen, according to reporting—while the offices themselves remained in place.⁸
The offices stayed. But people expected less pushback.
And when that expectation changes, behavior changes with it.
Pressure also moves through information. A dispute with the Associated Press over wording led to restrictions on access, prompting a federal judge to intervene while the case moved forward.⁹ The specifics mattered less than the signal it sent: that access, and the terms under which reporting happens, could be contested and reshaped. It doesn’t have to happen everywhere. People just have to see it happen somewhere.
Most people don’t experience any of this as policy or theory.