How to force a hover state with jQuery?

You will have to use a class, but don’t worry, it’s pretty simple. First we’ll assign your :hover rules to not only apply to physically-hovered links, but also to links that have the classname hovered.

a:hover, a.hovered { color: #ccff00; }

Next, when you click #btn, we’ll toggle the .hovered class on the #link.

$("#btn").click(function() {
   $("#link").toggleClass("hovered");
});

If the link has the class already, it will be removed. If it doesn’t have the class, it will be added.