JD Vance Campaigns for Orban

And complains about foreign interference in their elections.

Apr 10, 2026

On Tuesday, while American voters cast ballots in Georgia and Wisconsin, Vice President JD Vance was standing on a stage in Budapest, Hungary, delivering a campaign rally speech for a foreign leader.

“We’ve got to get Viktor Orbán reelected as prime minister of Hungary, don’t we?” Vance told the crowd at a sports arena. Trump joined by speakerphone to offer his own endorsement. It is highly unusual for a senior U.S. official to visit a foreign country close to a national election, let alone to address a campaign rally.

Who Is Viktor Orbán, and Why Does He Matter Here?

Orbán has ruled Hungary for 16 years. In that time, he has systematically weakened democratic institutions and is aligning Hungary ever more closely with Vladimir Putin while nominally remaining in the European Union. He has become a model and a hero for the global hard right, including the American MAGA movement. Trump has called him “a strong and powerful leader.”

This Sunday’s election is Orbán's most serious electoral challenge in 16 years. Vance’s visit comes with Orbán trailing the pro-European opposition Tisza party by 19 percentage points among decided voters. Vance praised Orbán’s leadership as a “model for the continent,” and accused the EU of interfering in Hungary’s election. The man accusing others of foreign interference was standing on a stage in Budapest five days before the election.

The Pattern Closest to Home

Vance’s Budapest trip would be remarkable on its own. But it lands in the middle of a sustained administration campaign to reshape American elections before November’s midterms.

On March 31, Trump signed an executive order with two distinct mechanisms to take control of US elections. The first directs the Department of Homeland Security, with assistance from the Social Security Administration, to compile a master list of eligible citizens in each state and send it to state election officials. The second directs the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to voters on a separately maintained, federally pre-approved list. States that don’t comply risk losing federal funding.

This is Trump’s second attempt to take over the elections. A nearly identical executive order from 2025 was blocked by multiple federal judges who concluded the president lacks constitutional authority to rewrite election law unilaterally. One judge called the government’s demands “unprecedented and illegal.” The administration issued a second order anyway.

Trump has also been pushing hard in Congress for the SAVE Act, legislation that imposes strict new voter identification requirements. This bill would effectively disenfranchise millions of eligible Americans. It passed the House and is stalled in the Senate.

The “Perfect” List

Central to the administration’s argument for taking over elections is that it has the data to do so accurately. Their agency of choice is the Department of Homeland Security, using DHS’s SAVE system. The SAVE system was built to check immigration status against federal databases. And we know how well their list is working. DHS has arrested U.S. citizens who showed up erroneously.

But the deeper problem is what the list cannot know. Voter eligibility is not simply a matter of citizenship and age. Felony disenfranchisement rules vary by state. Residency requirements differ. Registration deadlines are set by state laws. It has no systematic access to state-specific eligibility rules. The gap between what the administration claims this list does and what it can actually do is significant.

There is also the question of what else the list might be used for. The voter data the DOJ has been demanding from states includes driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. When a federal judge asked what DHS would do with that data, the DOJ attorney could not promise it would not be used for immigration enforcement. That is not a list being built purely for election administration, and multiple active lawsuits are pressing exactly that point.

The idea that DHS maintains a database accurate enough to serve as a gatekeeper of who can vote strains credulity. Federal judges are saying so in real time.

The Post Office as Manipulator of Elections

Under the executive order, a state may allow mail voting, but USPS would only deliver a ballot if the voter appears on the federally pre-approved list. The state says you can vote by mail. The federal government’s mail carrier may disagree. If your name is missing from the list due to a database error, administrative lag, or a recent move, your ballot will not be delivered.

There is also the postmark. Normally, mail was postmarked the day it arrived, even if processed later. In December, a new rule was quietly implemented, allowing mail to be postmarked on the day it is processed. Many states allow mail ballots to count if postmarked by Election Day, even if they arrive afterward. Under the new rule, a ballot mailed on Election Day could be postmarked the next day and disqualified. Trump’s 2025 executive order had already attempted to prohibit counting such ballots. That provision was blocked in court.

It is also worth noting that this change creates the conditions for manipulation. We have seen other seemingly innocuous changes to rules that the Trump Administration has abused. To be clear, no deliberate ballot delay has been reported, but there is more opportunity for abuse.

Taken together, the executive order, the postmark rule, the DHS citizenship lists, and the SAVE Act describe a coordinated effort to narrow who votes.

What This Administration Believes About Elections

The administration has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that American elections are rife with fraud. Courts have not agreed, and investigations have not substantiated it.

So far, the courts and the states have pushed back against the federal government's encroachment on elections. They have blocked executive order after executive order. But the pressure is sustained, the tactics are multiplying, and November is not far away. Understanding what is at stake and staying clear-eyed about what is happening is not alarmism. It is the minimum moment requires.

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