In recent days, America’s most dangerous adversaries have been celebrating what they see as a major victory: a funding freeze that has effectively halted the work of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), America’s foundation for freedom abroad. Authoritarian regimes in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Havana, the Taliban in Kabul, and terrorist networks are crowing. They’re doing so not just because NED has paused its grantmaking but because its worldwide network of grantees, who fight for freedom in their own societies, has been forced to halt critical work.
Cuba’s foreign minister mocked NED on social media. The Taliban cheered the defunding of a leading NED-backed independent media outlet, declaring it “the end of an illusion.” Iran’s state-affiliated media boasted that the “business of overthrowers has slumped.” And Chinese state media noted that “although NED is much smaller in size than USAID, it is more ideologically aggressive and absolute. . . . The sensation of it being cut off from funding is not small at all.”
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