Top Stories — Monday, April 13, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Hungary Election Results: Viktor Orban Concedes Defeat and Congratulates Peter Magyar — nyt News
- Inside Tyre, a Lebanese City Bombarded by Israel — nyt News
- Who Is Peter Magyar, the Man Who Toppled Hungary’s Orban — nyt News
Hungary Election Results: Viktor Orban Concedes Defeat and Congratulates Peter Magyar
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/13/2026, 2:02:21 AM
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, a lodestar for MAGA culture warriors and right-wing populists in Europe, conceded defeat on Sunday in a general election, breaking the momentum of a global nationalist revival promoted by President Trump.
Speaking to supporters Sunday evening in Budapest, Mr. Orban said the “election results, although not complete, are understandable and clear. They are painful for us but unequivocal.”
He congratulated the opposition in a surprisingly early and gracious concession speech, saying, “The responsibility and opportunity to govern were not given to us.” But, he also vowed: “We are not giving up. Never, never, never.”
Mr. Orban’s defeat paves the way for Peter Magyar, the leader of the main opposition party, Tisza, to take over as Hungary’s prime minister once the newly elected Parliament meets.
Sunday’s vote was widely seen as showdown between friends and foes of liberal democracy, a cause that Mr. Orban has battled against for years to applause from his fans in the United States, Europe and Latin America. It was closely watched by the Trump administration and the Kremlin, both of which wanted Mr. Orban to win and both of which offered support in his campaign.
With 66 percent of votes counted, the opposition Tisza party was on course to win 137 seats — more than a two-thirds majority — with Mr. Orban’s party, Fidesz, expected to win just 55. Mr. Magyar, a former Orban loyalist who broke away in 2024, will now likely succeed him.
Shortly before polls closed, the electoral authorities said that more than 77 percent of registered voters had cast ballots, the highest turnout in a Hungarian election since the collapse of Communism in 1989 and the start of democracy.
“Hungary’s fate will be decided today, for a long time to come,” Mr. Magyar said early Sunday as he went to vote. He later noted that Election Day was the anniversary of a 2003 vote in favor of joining the European Union, a sign that he wanted to end the Orban government’s antagonism toward the bloc.
After the results, large crowds of mostly young people thronged the banks of the River Danube in front of the Parliament Building, cheering and waving Hungarian flags. Many were stunned by the speed and scale of the defeat of Mr. Orban, whose party won the four previous elections easily.
The consequences of the vote may reach far beyond Hungary’s borders. They could help alter the course of the war in Ukraine, a neighbor that Mr. Orban has cast as an enemy of Hungary, and affect European security. They will also be looked at by populists around the world who view the Hungarian leader as a model of success and of pugnacious defiance of the mainstream.
Mr. Orban remade Hungary in his own image, eliminating many checks and balances by stacking the judicial system and nominally independent agencies with Fidesz loyalists, and taking control of most news media outlets. He also worked to export his model of “illiberal democracy,” promoting himself as an invincible guru for followers across Europe and elsewhere.
Sunday’s election results are likely to disappoint Mr. Trump, who sent Vice President JD Vance to Budapest, the Hungarian capital, last week to rally support for Mr. Orban in the final stretch of the campaign.
“I love Viktor,” said Mr. Trump, speaking by telephone from Washington to a gathering of Fidesz supporters in Budapest on Tuesday.
But Mr. Orban’s defeat will delight liberals and the European Union, which had increasingly come to view him as a disruptive menace.
Long a thorn in the side of E.U. officials in Brussels, Mr. Orban has consistently blocked European assistance to Ukraine, worked to water down sanctions on Russia and presented Ukraine, not Russia, as the principal threat to Europe’s security.
Those positions made him an invaluable ally for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Putin, hoping to help Mr. Orban’s chances in the election, assured him last month that Hungary could rely on steady deliveries of Russian oil and gas despite disruptions to global energy supplies caused by the war in Iran.
Despite his country’s small size and population of fewer than 10 million people, Mr. Orban, 62, has played an outsize role on the world stage during his 16 years in power, inspiring and, in some cases, funding like-minded political forces abroad. He became the standard-bearer for right-wing politicians committed to “family values” and “Western civilization” against what he has denounced as degenerate, multicultural liberals.
While sharing some of Mr. Orban’s views on the importance of national sovereignty and the dangers of “woke ideology,” the opposition leader, Mr. Magyar, a lawmaker in the European Parliament and divorced father of three, won votes for Tisza by promising drastic change, though he was often vague on the specifics.
On one issue he has been unequivocal. Mr. Magyar, 45, promised voters a clean break with the endemic corruption that has enriched the prime minister’s family and friends and helped saddle Hungary with the slowest-growing economy in the region. Hungary, according to an annual ranking by Transparency International, is the most corrupt country in the European Union.
Eager to reach beyond Budapest liberals, who have loathed Mr. Orban for years, Mr. Magyar stayed far away from issues dear to progressives like L.G.B.T. rights. He campaigned mainly on his biggest asset: he is not Viktor Orban. The prospect of change, no matter in what direction, underpinned much of his support.
“I want a change, I think we deserve a change,” said Eva Kepesne Fekete, 51, who works at a McDonald’s restaurant in Budapest. On her way to a polling station, she said she was tilting toward Tisza but was worried by reports in the media about a coming war if Mr. Orban lost.
Fears of war, stoked relentlessly by television and other new media outlets controlled by Fidesz, loomed large for those who said they had voted for Mr. Orban’s party.
“Magyar would drag Hungary into war,” said a Roma woman who would give only her first name, Eniko, 67. “I have two sons, and I don’t want them to become soldiers.”
Mr. Orban grew increasingly strident during the campaign in his attacks on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Mr. Magyar tried to tap into nationalist sentiment by recalling Hungary’s bitter history of bullying by Russia, which helped crush a liberal revolution in 1848 and an anti-Communist uprising in 1956.
Kremlin propaganda amplified and in some cases inspired Fidesz campaign talking points, particularly the message that Mr. Zelensky posed a serious threat to Hungary, and that a loss for Mr. Orban in the election would bring conflict and sharply higher energy prices for Hungarian households.
The outcome this weekend also vindicated the credibility of pollsters, most of which had given Tisza a wide lead over Fidesz and predicted a crushing defeat for the governing party.
The election delivered a major blow to Europe’s longest-serving government leader, and to those who look to him for inspiration and funding.
Despite pressure from the European Union, whose rules he has persistently defied, Mr. Orban has been dogged in pursuing the goal he set in 2014 of “constructing in Hungary an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”
Since then, Hungary has slid steadily down global rankings for personal and economic liberty, corruption and press freedom, becoming the first member of the European Union to drop from “free” to “partly free” in a 2019 ranking compiled by Freedom House.
Hungary, under Fidesz, established a host of research centers and other bodies offering well-paid work to American and other foreign conservatives who say they have been discriminated against in their home countries because of their views. It also hosted an annual conference in Budapest of the U.S. Conservative Political Action Committee, a fiesta of “anti-woke” speeches by right-wing politicians and pundits from around the world.
Mr. Magyar, speaking in Budapest soon after polls closed, declared himself “cautiously optimistic,” despite what he said had been “thousands of reports” of election tampering.
“Even in the smallest township,” he said, “people have seen that this cruel, inhumane power is finished and Hungary will once again become a free country.”
Andrew Higgins is the East and Central Europe bureau chief for The Times based in Warsaw, on temporary assignment in Shanghai.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Inside Tyre, a Lebanese City Bombarded by Israel
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/13/2026, 2:00:13 AM
Christina Goldbaum and Hwaida Saad
Christina Goldbaum, Hwaida Saad and David Guttenfelder traveled to Tyre, a city in southern Lebanon within Israel’s evacuation zone, to report this story.
The mother sat on the curb outside a hospital in southern Lebanon, holding her phone and pleading with a photo of her sons on its screen.
“I’m waiting for you, answer me, answer me,” the woman, Fatima Kholeif, cried. “I’m your mother, just answer me.”
Her relatives huddled around her, unsure of what to do. When one tried to coax the phone from Ms. Kholeif’s hands to calm her down, she just clutched it harder. Didn’t they understand? The photos were all she had left of her sons — the sons who had just bought her hair dye so she could color her wispy, gray curls, a respite from the Israeli bombing. The sons who had kissed her cheeks that morning as they left for work harvesting oranges in an orchard nearby. The sons who were killed in that orchard in an airstrike.
“I can’t endure this,” she cried, her voice trailing off. “Two of my sons, two, two, two.”
Within minutes, a frenzy erupted around her as news arrived that the Israeli military had issued a warning about imminent strikes near the hospital in Tyre, a coastal city within the large swath of southern Lebanon where Israel has told residents to flee north. Other families waiting outside the hospital scattered, racing away on motorcycles toward the seaside. “Come on,” Ms. Kholeif’s neighbor said, lifting her off the curb and shuttling her into a car before Israeli warplanes arrived overhead.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Who Is Peter Magyar, the Man Who Toppled Hungary’s Orban
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/13/2026, 1:48:55 AM
The party of Peter Magyar, 45, a conservative politician and a lawmaker in the European Parliament, delivered a stunning blow in Sunday’s election in Hungary, dethroning the longtime prime minister, Viktor Orban.
Mr. Magyar, who studied law, was a little-known member of Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party for more than two decades, serving as a diplomat in Brussels and holding senior positions in state agencies. He was married to Judit Varga, a leading Fidesz figure, until 2023.
Mr. Magyar rose to prominence in 2024 after he broke with Mr. Orban over a political scandal set off by revelations that a man convicted of covering up sexual abuse at a children’s home had been pardoned. That year, Mr. Magyar created Tisza, an upstart political movement that went on to win 30 percent of the vote in Hungary during the European Parliament elections.
In the parliamentary election in Hungary on Sunday, with 66 percent of votes counted, the party was on course to win 137 seats, more than a two-thirds majority
His campaign was fueled in large part by widespread public anger about corruption, particularly the misuse of billions of euros in E.U. funding, and concern about Hungary’s sluggish economic growth. He promised to improve relations with the European Union, which has held up development funds for Hungary amid assertions that Mr. Orban has undermined democratic institutions.
Mr. Magyar also focused on living standards and issues like Hungary’s dilapidated health care system. But he steered clear of issues like L.G.B.T.Q. rights and stayed silent on a ban on the Budapest Pride parade last year. And while he criticized Mr. Orban’s tilt toward Russia by emphasizing Moscow’s long history of bullying Hungary, he avoided talking about the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Magyar was not Mr. Orban’s first right-wing challenger.
In the 2022 general election, Mr. Orban’s fractious opponents rallied behind Peter Marki-Zay, a conservative, churchgoing, small-town mayor with seven children. The effort flopped, ending in a landslide victory for Fidesz after the governing party deployed its media machine to portray Mr. Marki-Zay as a warmonger intent on sending Hungarians to fight against Russia in Ukraine.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
Read the full story at nyt News.
For complete details, visit the original sources linked above.
Comments
Post a Comment