In his sweeping attempts to remake the federal government, President Donald Trump is using a playbook first perfected in Hungary by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

While Trump’s actions are often described as “unprecedented,” his rapid campaign to seize control of independent democratic institutions echoes similar moves by Orbán as he led an autocratic takeover of Hungary starting in 2010.

In a meeting at the White House on Friday, Trump praised Orbán and said more political leaders should follow his example.

“I stick up for Viktor Orbán. Not a lot of people do because in many cases they are jealous,” Trump said while while sitting alongside the prime minister. “They wish they did what he did. They’d have no problems if they did what he did.”

Since returning to office, Trump has taken a number of steps to consolidate power and weaken his perceived political enemies, firing federal workers en masse, canceling grants to universities and threatening to tax or strip the tax-exempt status of their endowments, vowing to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV stations over their news coverage and attempting to suspend security clearances of law firms, among other things.

Experts on recent Hungarian politics say these actions are similar to Orbán’s program after he returned to office in 2010.

“The main thing is that you control everything by controlling money,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a constitutional scholar at Princeton University who has lived in and studied Hungary for decades. “So Trump controls universities by threatening their grants, their tax-exempt status. It’s all financial stuff when you get down to it, and that was something that Orbán pioneered.”

Read the full analysis from Laura Barrón-López and Vaughn Hillyard here.

Eight Democratic senators joined Republicans on a procedural move to advance a bill Sunday that would end the government shutdown with a promise for a vote soon on extending expiring health-care subsidies.

Here are some highlights of the president’s actions over the last seven days:

The news can feel overwhelming. But each week, we pause to highlight a person, organization or movement sticking up for their principles or their fellow Americans. This week’s challenger is Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

When the Trump administration sought to halt Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments during the federal government shutdown, both Democratic and Republican governors pushed back, but few went as far as Moore. Maryland joined D.C. and 24 other states to sue to prevent the suspension of SNAP during the shutdown. The state allocated an emergency $10 million to food banks and other private groups providing assistance. And Moore authorized another $62 million in state funds to go toward paying November SNAP benefits. “We are watching the president, who is literally breaking the law so people can starve, but we’re not going to sit there and tolerate it in our state,” he said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Learn more.

For millions of Americans, buying a home is financially out of reach. Housing, affordability and the economy, those were the top issues for voters in last week’s elections. So Trump is now proposing what his administration says will be “a complete game changer”: A 50-year fixed-rate mortgage. Where to start? Spreading out payments could lower costs compared to a 30-year loan — different estimates suggest over $200 a month — but you could pay as much as double in interest. Furthermore, banks are likely to charge higher rates because the loans will take longer to pay off. And if the goal is to bring more buyers into the market, but the number of homes stays the same, then prices will likely only go higher. Goodbye, savings. Not to mention that the average age of a first-time homebuyer is a record 40 years old. Who wants to pay off their mortgage at age 90? What would help: encouraging homebuilding and cutting tariffs on construction material. Lower tariffs would also lower inflation and, in turn, lead to lower interest rates. Learn more.