The Trump administration has halted funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S.-funded organization that has been involved in influencing elections and supporting regime change under the banner of “promoting democracy.”
According to The Free Press, an order from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) directed the U.S. Treasury Department to block funds meant for the NED, severely disrupting the organization’s operations.
“It’s been a bloodbath,” an NED staffer told The Free Press. “We have not been able to meet payroll and pay basic overhead expenses.”
The NED, which was established in 1983 during the Cold War, was allocated $315 million from the U.S. government for the 2025 fiscal year, as per the report.
In a 1991 interview with The Washington Post, Allen Weinstein, a co-founder of NED, admitted that much of what the organization did was previously carried out covertly by the CIA. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius further noted that the NED’s activities, such as funding pro-democracy groups, training resistance fighters, and working to undermine communist governments, were once handled by the CIA.
Elon Musk has been critical of the NED, recently posting on X and asking his followers to list “all the evil things that NED has done.” Jim Bovard, a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute, responded by sharing an article detailing his four decades of criticism against the organization.
In a 2009 article for the Future Freedom Foundation, Bovard argued that the NED operates on the assumption that interfering in foreign elections is inherently democratic because the U.S. government represents democracy. He stated that the organization follows the belief that “what’s good for the U.S. government is good for democracy.”
Bovard also discussed the NED’s involvement in Latin America in a 2006 article for The American Conservative. He pointed out that in 2001, the NED significantly increased its financial support to Venezuelan opponents of then-President Hugo Chávez. The organization also heavily funded groups linked to the 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez. Following his return to power, both the NED and the U.S. State Department funneled additional funds to organizations seeking his removal.
Furthermore, Bovard highlighted the role of the International Republican Institute, a major NED grant recipient, in supporting both the Chávez coup and the overthrow of Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He explained that in February 2004, various NED-funded groups and individuals played a part in an uprising that resulted in 100 deaths and the toppling of Aristide’s government.