DOGE Cuts Off ENTIRE $315M Budget of the National Endowment for Democracy

President Trump and DOGE have set their sights on another source of rampant government corruption and waste: The National Endowment for Democracy (NED.)

Elon Musk’s DOGE ordered the U.S. Treasury to suspend all funding to the NED, which had received a $315 million budget for the year.

This has completely crippled the organization, which has been involved in numerous shady dealings under the guise of “promoting democracy” worldwide.

Check it out:

BREAKING: The Trump Administration led by DOGE suspends the $315 Million budget of the National Endowment for Democracy. pic.twitter.com/lmVWf4JTgv

— Ian Jaeger (@IanJaeger29) February 13, 2025

🚨BREAKING: The Trump Administration led by DOGE suspends the $315 Million budget of the National Endowment for Democracy.

— DOGE NEWS- Department of Government Efficiency (@realdogeusa) February 13, 2025

Trump Suspends Funding to the National Endowment for Democracy@DecampDave

The Trump administration has frozen funding to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US-funded organization that meddles in elections and pushes regime change around the world in the name of… pic.twitter.com/2JqCU7wToE

— Kyle Anzalone (@KyleAnzalone_) February 12, 2025

Originally established underneath Ronald Regan during the Cold War, the NED is now widely believed to be a CIA front used to interfere in elections and foster regime change around the world.

Glenn Greenwald pointed out:

The National Endowment for Democracy is a CIA front that is one of the most destructive, deceitful and manipulative entities on the planet. This funding freeze should be permanent: https://t.co/G6O6B3AMWv

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 12, 2025

Elon Musk recently called the NED a “SCAM” as part of a thread related to all the evil things the organization has been a part of.

NED is a SCAM https://t.co/YmNO4NGMjS

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025

I’ll drop the original post Elon was replying to here:

Per grok

Here are 20 red flags of corruption or concerns regarding the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), based on the information available:

Lack of Bipartisanship: Despite being legally required to reflect the diversity of American society, NED is predominantly staffed…

— DOGEMemery🌞 (@DogeMemery) February 2, 2025

NED staffers are calling the funding freeze a “bloodbath,” with the organization no longer to pay its employees or pay expenses to keep operating.

The Free Press exclusively reported:

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 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.

ADVERTISEMENT

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.

It made bespoke grants to activists and labor unions behind the Iron Curtain. “We provided radios and copy machines for Solidarity,” former NED president Carl Gershman told The Free Press, referring to Lech Wałęsa’s independent worker movement in Communist Poland.

After the Cold War, NED expanded its mission beyond the disbanded Soviet bloc, making grants to pro-democracy NGOs in Iran, China, Venezuela, and Cuba—again using a strategy of supporting local citizens opposed to the authoritarian systems that ruled them. NED and its sister organizations, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute—one for each party—enjoyed bipartisan support.

“Thanks to NED grantees, the world learned about the horrible death of Masih Amini at the hands of the brutal Iranian regime,” the endowment’s current president, Damon Wilson, told The Free Press, referring to a young Iranian woman who died in custody after being arrested for failing to wear a head covering.

Other grantees “documented how the Cuban regime has become a kleptocratic mafia state. NED partners exposed the Uyghur genocide as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s network of overseas police stations bringing their tools and techniques of coercion and repression into free societies, including here in the United States,” Wilson said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Let’s hope the funding freeze on NED is not just a temporary one.

In other words, the NED needs to go the way of USAID…