It’s hard to keep track of the upheaval in Washington since President Trump’s inauguration, and even harder, amid the media freakout, to distinguish really important changes from trivial ones.
But what’s happening at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a very big deal, and has not been previously reported.
NED, a key U.S. instrument for supporting grassroots freedom movements around the world, is under siege from Elon Musk’s DOGE. An order from DOGE to the U.S. Treasury that blocked disbursement of NED funds has crippled the organization—which received $315 million for fiscal year 2025—and its affiliates, The Free Press has learned.
“It’s been a bloodbath,” one NED staffer said. “We have not been able to meet payroll and pay basic overhead expenses.”
NED’s dismantling would be far more than a cost-cutting measure. It would symbolize a major change in U.S. foreign policy, undercutting the notion that democratic ideals foster U.S. global strength and influence. Instead, the Trump administration would be signaling that it no longer believes that promoting democracy around the globe is in the national interest.
Created in 1983 with bipartisan support and the backing of President Ronald Reagan, NED was intended to attack the Soviet “empire of evil” at its weakest point: its lack of democratic legitimacy.
