Balázs Orbán and Carl Bildt clashed at Budapest’s Brain Bar festival, offering starkly different visions for Europe’s future. While Bildt urged deeper EU integration to confront crises from migration to war, Orbán accused Brussels of centralizing power and undermining sovereignty—echoing Hungary’s longstanding call for new leadership.
Budapest’s municipal government could face insolvency by late 2025, putting public services at risk, according to a new report by the State Audit Office, which highlights mounting deficits, depleted reserves, and rising financial obligations.
A new poll by Donald Trump’s longtime pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, shows Fidesz–KDNP leading Tisza—contradicting weeks of opposition-linked surveys that had placed Péter Magyar’s party ahead. Commissioned by Index, the poll puts Fidesz at 43 per cent, Tisza at 37, with Viktor Orbán still seen as the favourite for prime minister.
The blood of Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk is not only on the hands of their killers—it stains the political and cultural establishment that excused, enabled, and even celebrated their deaths. These tragedies are not isolated—they are warnings for conservatives worldwide.
‘The sad truth is that most liberal democracies have had it so good for so long that we’ve forgotten that almost nothing worthwhile comes without effort, that freedom has to be defended, and that often enough the alternative to fighting is surrender. Something that Israel has always known; that the Ukrainians have more recently discovered; that the Taiwanese might belatedly be waking up to…’
‘Within just 14 months, the US has witnessed both the attempted assassination of a former president and presidential candidate, and the actual assassination of one of the most prominent figures supporting the party in power…Both attacks unfolded before crowds of thousands…No wonder two incidents like those have prompted a change in perspective towards free speech on the right.’
‘Lévy is ultimately boxed within the same pre-October 7 suppositions that paralyse legacy Jewish institutions cornered by anti-Zionist Wokeism yet unable to broaden their appeal or become agents of larger coalitions…Yet standing on those same rigid principles blinds Lévy to the prospect that, abandoned by liberals, Jews will either find new allies or perish as a sovereign entity capable of self-defence.’
‘Hungary is on Israel’s side,’ fighting against Islamist terrorism and hate propaganda against Jewish people.
‘From that moment onward, Catholics who remained faithful to Rome went underground…To this day, they continue to survive as an “underground” Church, which the Vatican…no longer supports. Numerous priests, nuns, and faithful continue to be imprisoned, tortured, and, in certain cases, even put to death for their refusal to submit to the CCP’s institutional church.’
In its ‘Beyond the Óperencia’ series, Magyar Krónika is looking at the meeting points of America and Hungary, and at Hungarians in America, from penniless peasants to political emigrants and soldiers of fortune. In this section, let us go on with the story of Joseph Pulitzer, whose newspaper played a leading role in stirring up readers in the run-up to the Spanish–American War.