Amid the assault on federal institutions orchestrated by tycoon-in-chief Elon Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service disciples, the National Endowment for Democracy has found itself unable to gain access to its congressionally appropriated funds at the U.S. Treasury. As a result, sources told me, NED’s operations are grinding to a halt.
The organization’s entire budget ($315 million a year) is a rounding error in the context of a $6.9 trillion U.S. budget, and eliminating it will have next to no impact on a $1.8 trillion budget deficit. But NED’s practical and symbolic significance far exceeds its modest financial resources.
Since its creation in 1983, at the instigation of President Ronald Reagan, NED has been backing dissidents and activists around the world who advocate American ideals and who are working to combat the corruption and despotism of authoritarian regimes. NED helped the Solidarity movement in 1980s Poland and the recent Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. That NED has now been denied access to its congressionally appropriated funds, in evident violation of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, is a troubling indicator of how the Trump administration is undermining democracy at home while aligning with authoritarian regimes and illiberal movements abroad.
The impact of NED’s defunding (first reported by the Free Press) is already being felt. NED and its core partners — the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, the (labor affiliated) Solidarity Center and the Center for International Private Enterprise — are having to furlough employees and close country offices.
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NED has also been forced to suspend funding for about 2,000 grant recipients in 100 countries. These are organizations such as the Cuban Democratic Directorate, whose shortwave broadcasts provide independent information to the people of Cuba; Memorial, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights organization that provides an accounting of political prisoners in Russia; the World Uyghur Congress, which documents the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur people; and China Digital Times, which exposes Beijing’s disinformation campaigns.
NED doesn’t have a lot of overhead — 83 cents of every dollar goes directly to grant recipients, NED President Damon Wilson told me — and it provides small grants (88 percent are less than $150,000) to courageous activists on the front lines of freedom. NED’s focus is on repressive countries such as Russia, China, Myanmar, Iran and Cuba, where the U.S. Agency for International Development (also now essentially defunct) and private aid groups can’t operate. “NED fills this important niche of supporting pro-freedom, pro-American partners in the toughest places,” Wilson said. “It’s a small investment with the biggest impact in closed societies.”
Little wonder that America’s enemies are crowing over NED’s shutdown as part of the general freeze on U.S. foreign aid. A Chinese website celebrated the downfall of this “infamous” outfit, claiming that “NED has long supported anti-China organizations.” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez urged an investigation of how NED has supposedly organized “destabilization and terrorism against Cuba.” And Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote that NED’s “activities have been recognized as undesirable in Russia,” and that it “has long been engaged in subversive cognitive operations around the globe.”
Such attacks from hostile, anti-American regimes should serve as NED’s strongest advertisements — and they help explain why Republicans who prioritize national security have so long supported this organization. The chairman of NED’s board is Peter J. Roskam, a former Republican member of Congress, and one of its vice chairmen is Stephen Biegun, who was deputy secretary of state in the first Trump administration. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s choice to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was an NED board member, while Marco Rubio was a board member of the NED-affiliated International Republican Institute until being chosen as secretary of state. Indeed, Rubio made an eloquent speech at IRI’s annual dinner last year, endorsing its work promoting “freedom and democracy.”
Yet, notwithstanding this long history of Republican support for NED, Musk and some MAGA extremists seem intent on destroying it. In the process, they have employed language that closely mirrors that of undemocratic regimes around the world. (It’s worth noting in this context that Tesla has its largest automobile factory and a massive new battery plant in Shanghai, and Musk has described himself as “kind of pro-China.”)
“NED is a scam,” Musk wrote on X on Feb. 2, adding that it’s guilty of unspecified “crimes” and supposedly “RIFE with CORRUPTION!!” The Center for Renewing America, the think tank founded by Russell Vought before he became Trump’s budget director, published a long hit piece accusing NED of, among other things, fomenting the 2011 Arab Spring and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, thereby making NED guilty of “Middle East meddling” and “Ukraine warmongering.”
That’s the sort of argument authoritarian regimes use to gaslight their own people, by claiming that protests are the work of foreign agitators. People rise up against repressive regimes because they want freedom not because they are American puppets.
Also spurious is the Center for Renewing America’s charge that NED has been engaged “in an overt effort to stop and then stymie President Trump.” This accusation is primarily based on anti-Trump statements of some current and former members of NED’s bipartisan board, whose ranks naturally include Democrats and independents as well as Republicans. But NED stays out of domestic U.S. politics. In 2020, it provided a grant to a British nongovernmental organization to track Chinese disinformation in various countries but not in the United States. That group later issued a report finding that some right-wing U.S. media organizations were susceptible to disinformation. NED didn’t fund the U.S. report and cut off all support for the group within the week, Wilson told me.
If NED has to shut down permanently, its demise would not help the MAGA movement in the slightest — but it would be a boon to America’s enemies, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
“My experience with the National Endowment for Democracy has shown me that it is a vital American institution for advancing the cause of freedom,” Nicaraguan dissident Félix Maradiaga, who spent 21 months in a maximum-security prison after attempting to run against President Daniel Ortega, emailed me. “At a time when authoritarian regimes seek to silence dissent and crush democratic aspirations, NED has provided a lifeline to human rights defenders, journalists, and pro-democracy activists who are courageously standing up to oppression.”
Unfortunately, that lifeline is now in danger of being severed. In the process, U.S. soft power — the ability to promote the nation’s interests without resorting to military force or economic coercion — will suffer another serious blow.