What happened
Hungary’s parliament yesterday approved a constitutional amendment barring prime ministers from serving more than eight years in office. The amendment, which passed 135 to 50, was “written to apply retroactively,” effectively blocking former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from returning to power, Politico said. 

Who said what
The amendment, pushed through by Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s Tisza party, “also paves the way for the dissolution” of tools created by Orbánto consolidate his power, Reuters said, including a Sovereignty Protection Office that “stigmatized opposition figures and journalists,” and public trust foundations that transferred valuable “state assets” to Orbán’s political party and allies. The legislation was part of Magyar’s promised “crusade for ‘regime change’” after 16 straight years of Orbán rule, Politico said, but would also put a “significant limit on Magyar’s own power, as he vows to restore liberal democracy in Hungary.” 

What next?
The bill now goes to President Tamás Sulyok, an Orbán appointee who has refused Magyar’s calls to resign. Sulyok “could attempt to block the measure,” said United24 Media, but Tisza’s two-thirds parliamentary supermajority “has the power to override a veto.” 

What happened
Fox Corp. yesterday said it was buying streaming and smart-TV company Roku for $22 billion, its first major acquisition since chief executive Lachlan Murdoch cemented control of his family’s media empire last year. The deal will give Fox, with its news and live sports content, a foothold in the more than 100 million households that use Roku’s platform. 

Who said what
The cash-and-stock deal “would make the Murdoch media empire a formidable contender in the streaming wars,” positioning Fox to “reach customers who are abandoning traditional TV,” The New York Times said. Specifically, it would transform the company into a “major player in free, ad-supported streaming,” The Washington Post said, combining Fox-owned Tubi with Roku’s own “free-to-stream, ad-supported offering.” 

Fox’s “bigger play here is advertising revenue, something all the major streamers are now jockeying for,” Forrester research director Mike Proulx said in a statement. “If this deal closes, Fox will control more of what viewers watch, how they discover it and how it gets monetized.”

What next?
Fox and Roku said their merger, expected to close in the first half of 2027, would create the “third-largest player in U.S. television by share of viewing.”

Nearly half of its customers pay nothing for their food and drink. But since the Post Modern Times cafe in Minneapolis stopped charging customers earlier this year and instead asked for voluntary donations, it is making a profit after mostly posting losses for years. 

The cafe’s owner, Dylan Alverson, moved to a donations-only model in response to the “government occupation” of Minneapolis, he said in a statement on the restaurant’s Instagram account in January. The Post Modern Times is just four blocks from where Renée Good was killed in January by ICE agents and six blocks from the site of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. 

“Effective tomorrow, we are done making money for the fascists that occupy our city,” said Alverson. “We refuse to generate taxes under the guise of a functioning for-profit capitalist business aligned with government strategy.” 

Running on donations means the cafe doesn’t have to pay taxes on sales, and the staff are volunteers working for shared tips and community donations. After “fighting to make a profit for 15 years,” Alverson told The New York Times, “I don’t think it’s possible without taking advantage of people.” But since making the change, “I have succeeded more than I ever did when I was running a conventional business employing 22 people.” 

Some 42% of US restaurant owners said their businesses weren’t profitable last year, according to the National Restaurant Association. So what “started as a workaround to paying sales tax,” the Times said, might turn out to “offer a solution to a broken industry.”