Preparing for a Second Trump Term by Learning from Hungary’s Playbook

As the United States braces for a second Trump administration, LGBTQ+ Americans are preparing for what could be an unprecedented rollback of their rights. Central to this looming threat is Project 2025, a comprehensive policy agenda spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation that aims to dismantle protections for LGBTQ+ people, ban diversity initiatives, and defund gender-affirming care under Medicaid. These measures mirror authoritarian tactics employed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose anti-LGBTQ+ policies have reshaped Hungary’s legal system and public life over the past decade.

This alignment is no coincidence. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, has openly praised Orbán’s governance as “the model” for conservative statecraft. Orbán’s track record underscores how constitutional amendments and censorship laws can be used to marginalize LGBTQ+ people and silence dissent—and Project 2025 is a roadmap for US politics that aims to curtail civil liberties further.

“The United States is quickly feeling the effects of the impending Trump presidency,” LGBTQ+ legislative researcher and transgender activist Allison Chapman told NPQ. “Unfortunately, the bleak reality is that transgender rights are likely to be severely limited this year and will have a devastating effect on transgender adults’ and children’s mental and physical wellbeing.”

Orbán’s Systematic Attack on LGBTQ+ Rights

Since returning to power in 2010, Viktor Orbán’s government has systematically targeted LGBTQ+ rights as part of its broader nationalist agenda. As Hadley Renkin, associate professor at Central European University (CEU), explained to NPQ, “Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz party began, as part of their renewed politics of nationalism, to target queer people, feminists, and others as ‘anti-family’ and ‘anti-national traditions of gender roles and relations.’”

One of Orbán’s first actions after his electoral victory was to consolidate power by rewriting Hungary’s constitution, a move that has helped him maintain his grip on power ever since. In addition to weakening judicial independence, redrawing electoral maps, eroding media freedom, and undermining institutional checks and balances, these sweeping changes also restricted the rights and freedoms of Hungarian citizens. Marriage was explicitly defined as “the union of a man and a woman,” excluding same-sex couples from legal recognition; the definition of family was confined to traditional, heterosexual partnerships.

Nine years later, in 2020, Hungary passed a law ending legal recognition for transgender and intersex people, stripping them of the ability to change their names or gender markers on official documents.

In 2021, the Hungarian Parliament passed a “don’t say gay” law (which inspired similar anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in multiple US states), banning the depiction or discussion of LGBTQ+ topics in educational materials and media accessible to minors. This law not only restricted LGBTQ+ representation on television programs but also led to legal actions against content providers and booksellers while prompting widespread self-censorship among teachers and community groups.

“There were outreach classes run by lesbian and gay groups in Hungary…which used to go out to schools like high schools, middle schools,” Renkin said. “These had to stop because that was public representation [of] queerness, which you can’t do, and they were terrified of being charged with breaking this law.”

Research by Amnesty International highlights how Hungary’s “don’t say gay” law has entrenched negative stereotypes and restricted LGBTQ+ visibility in schools and media. It also led to a reported increase in homophobic attacks as well as surveillance and shutting down of nonprofit groups.

Orbán’s policies have also extended to academic institutions, as seen in the passage of Lex CEU in 2017, which forced CEU—one of two universities in the country that offers a master’s program in gender studies—to leave the country and relocate to Austria. At the same time, Hungary removed gender studies from its list of accredited academic programs and replaced it with “Economics of Family Policy and Public Policies for Human Development.”

Hungarian police have also targeted safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community. In 2017, Auróra—a cultural center vital to Budapest’s underground music and art scene and home to several nonprofits—was raided and subsequently shut down.

“What are you left with? Underground culture, bars, and clubs,” Renkin said.

Yet, with spaces like Auróra being raided—an action widely seen as politically motivated due to its ties to civil organizations and progressive causes, including support groups for LGBTQ+ people and people of the Roma ethnic minority—the LGBTQ+ community in Hungary has been increasingly pushed into invisibility.

“The illiberal forces have been able to succeed because of the lack of resistance and because of a perfect strategy of attacking certain institutions and certain places, eliminating spaces of resistance,” Andrea Pető, a historian at CEU, told NPQ.

Trump, Orbán, and the Conservative Connection

Hungary provides a chilling blueprint for US conservatives to implement similar anti-LGBTQ+ policies while consolidating power. As Pető pointed out, “Hungary is a laboratory, and what works will be applied by other illiberal forces.”

Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán have openly praised each other’s policies and governance styles. Orbán was among the few world leaders who endorsed Trump during the 2016 US presidential election and has met with Trump on multiple occasions. During Orbán’s 2019 visit to the White House, Trump lauded Orbán’s leadership and said that the Hungarian authoritarian was “highly respected.”

“Orbán and Trump are part of the same transnational movement linked not only to transferring know-how but also to destroying and attacking liberal, human-rights-based institutions and values [and] intellectuals and activists,” Pető said.

This relationship between Orbán and the American far right has only deepened over time, driven by a shared ideological mission to dismantle “gender ideology.” This term, weaponized by leaders like Orbán and Trump, frames LGBTQ+ people and gender equality movements as threats to traditional family values and national identity. As Pető explained, “Gender is a symbolic glue.”

This partnership between Orbán and the American far right has grown stronger through their involvement in international conservative gatherings, such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where Orbán has urged conservatives to “take back the institutions” and championed his model of “illiberal democracy.”

“With conservative institutional funding and support from the US, Orbán has positioned himself as the standard-bearer of the transnational far right, calling for a Christian nationalist coalition to ‘unite our forces,’” historian William Horne told NPQ.

At the 2023 CPAC in Budapest, Orbán criticized the “woke movement and gender ideology,” positioning Hungary as a model for conservative governance. “Hungary is actually an incubator where experiments are done on the future of conservative policies,” Orbán stated. “Hungary is the place where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it.”

And at the 2024 CPAC Europe conference, Orbán continued to rally conservatives, declaring, “Make America great again, make Europe great again! Go Donald Trump, go European sovereigntists!”

This alignment has found an audience in the United States, where far-right figures like Tucker Carlson have openly praised Orbán’s policies. In fact, Carlson broadcast an entire week of his show from Budapest in 2021, portraying Hungary’s cultural conservatism and strict immigration policies as a model for the United States.

Meanwhile, conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have collaborated with Orbán’s government, further strengthening transnational alliances. As a result, many of the anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-democratic state-level laws passed in states like Florida closely mirror existing laws in Hungary.

“Many policies implemented in Hungary have since made their way here—laws targeting LGBTQ+ people in schools, crackdowns on transgender medical care, the erasure of legal recognition for transgender people by defining us out of existence, and more,” transgender activist and journalist Erin Reed told NPQ.

Scholars predict that the Orbán-like laws will likely move from states to the federal level in the next administration. In 2024, Orbán’s ties to Trump deepened with a series of meetings in Florida, where he formally endorsed Trump’s presidential bid and participated in discussions with Trump and Elon Musk.

“The future has begun,” Orbán wrote on X.

Lessons in Resilience: Coalition Building and Community Care in Hungary

While Orbán’s policies serve as a blueprint for conservative politics, US LGBTQ+ activists can learn from Hungarian activists’ resistance strategies.

With legal recourse often unavailable due to the government’s capture of the judiciary, along with the erosion of media independence and the undermining of civil society and nonprofits, Hungarians have taken to the streets, forming broad coalitions of resistance that bring together students, workers, and marginalized communities to push back against Orbán’s illiberal policies.

As Pető advised, “What can be done is the following: (1) preserve the places and spaces; (2) reflect on why this kind of encroachment…is happening; (3) create and engage in emotionally attractive alternatives; (4) try to get organized at a local level.”

These tactics, advocated by Pető, have been implemented by Hungarian organizers who have safeguarded independent spaces, organized their local community, and orchestrated protests for a diverse array of causes.

For instance, in 2017, 10,000 people protested Lex CEU and the government’s crackdown on academic freedom. Similarly, in 2018, 15,000 people marched in opposition to the so-called “slave law,” which permitted employers to demand increased overtime from their workers. In response, 16 trade unions organized strikes.

In 2022, tens of thousands of teachers, parents, and students protested against low teacher salaries, educational censorship, and the suppression of teachers’ right to strike after the dismissal of five teachers from Budapest’s Kölcsey Ferenc High School. Demonstrators formed a human chain across the city, blocked the Margit Bridge for several hours, and teachers organized wildcat strikes, resulting in some of the largest protests in Hungary since 1989.

In June 2024, over 30,000 people took part in Budapest Pride to protest the government’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies.

During these protests, Hungarian organizers prioritized mutual aid and community care to support and protect their communities. For example, during the Lex CEU protests, activists were met with a wave of support from academics, public intellectuals, politicians, and communities worldwide, which put pressure on the government to protect academic freedom.

Additionally, during the “slave law” protests, labor unions and grassroots organizations worked together to provide financial and logistical support to workers participating in the marches.

By creating long-term support systems and engaging in resistance strategies informed by Hungarian organizing, US activists can build resilient communities capable of enduring and fighting authoritarianism in the second Trump administration.

“[A]uthoritarian moments like this should remind us that it is of perhaps greater importance to focus our work…on the creation of things—communities, coalitions, and institutions grounded in care,” Horne said. “It is these, after all, that offer not only protection against fascists but also the potential for liberation and transformation—a world in which fascism is impossible.”