In the world of boxing, the saying “he’s on his heels” means that the opponent is forced into the defensive and has to retreat.
That is exactly what President Donald Trump, with the help of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, are doing day in and day out to the proverbial “Deep State.” Earlier this month, President Trump announced he was defunding the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a de facto arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. That was immediately followed by the withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the defunding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
President Trump isn’t letting up. On Tuesday, he landed a haymaker to his already-shaky foe, sending them grasping for the ropes after it was reported another “CIA cutout” was being defunded. According to the Free Press, President Trump significantly cut funding to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), essentially “starving” the organization. The Free Press writes:
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.
The National Endowment for Democracy is a “CIA cutout” according to former State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary and founder of Foundation for Freedom Online Mike Benz. It was started in November 1983 and is funded directly by Congress. Under the guise of “promoting democracy,” what once was consider covert actions have now become overt. According to a 1991 opinion piece in the Washington Post:
The sugar daddy of overt operations has been the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-private group headed by Carl Gershman that is funded by the U.S. Congress. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been unspeakably covert — dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain.
As with many government-funded non-profits and cutouts, what started as a possibly ‘good intentioned’ has turned into an imperialistic disaster. Just recently, NED’s publication, the Journal for Democracy called for the arrest of Poland’s PiS party to “ensure that populism does not return,” comparing it to the “crimes of communism”:
Now, in late 2023, a second wave of “transitional justice” is suddenly looming over Poland. This time, however, the transgressions of the populist regime are overshadowing disputes about accountability for the crimes of communism. PiS had barely taken power in 2015 before violating the 1997 Constitution by not printing a Constitutional Tribunal ruling in order to avoid implementing it and by packing the court in violation of the constitution. The party may have campaigned this year on rebuilding state institutions and social policies, but it violated the rule of law throughout its entire 2015–23 reign.
Poland’s new government must therefore do more than just return to liberal democracy; it must address transitional justice. Prime Minister Tusk and his coalition government must also stabilize the political system to ensure that populism does not return in the next election. The future of democracy in Poland hangs in the balance.
Anne Applebaum is on the board of directors for the most notorious CIA cut-out in all of US history.
So, you know, when reading her froth-mouthed hit piece today on Elon Musk, maybe take that into consideration. https://t.co/QObltUGXgc pic.twitter.com/Vxil7uCRES
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) September 11, 2023
In September 2023, NED welcomed to its Board of Directors former State Department official and the maestro behind the 2014 colour revolution in Ukraine known as the Maidan Revolution. Nuland had previously worked under the Bush and Obama administrations, sitting out Trump’s first term, and then rejoining during the Biden ‘administration.’
During the Maidan, NED funded over 60 projects in Ukraine to ‘promote democracy,’ mostly civil society groups that were involved in the protests that eventually unconstitutionally overthrew Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
NED is also alleged to have supported an unsuccessful coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in 2002 and funded opposition groups in 2019 to undermine the Venezuelan government. The Center for Economic and Policy Research wrote in 2004:
What, then, are the major threats to democracy in Venezuela? The attention here has focused on the Venezuelan government. It is of course true, as Americans have long recognized, that any government can become repressive if its citizens are not vigilant. But Venezuelan democracy faces other challenges.
Some are from Washington. Our government has funded, and continues to fund, organizations headed by people who were leaders of the military coup of April 2002. (See Appendix 2). These leaders have received, and some continue to receive, funds from the United States Congress through the National Endowment for Democracy. These are people who signed the actual coup decree of April 12, 2002, that overthrew the elected President and Vice President, and abolished the General Assembly, the Supreme Court and the constitution, and established a dictatorship.
Should these people, and their organizations, be funded by US taxpayers’ dollars? Is this the proper function of the National Endowment for Democracy? These are questions that Congress should ask. I think that most Americans would be against such funding if they were aware of it.
The NED is also funding a group — called Sumate — that led the signature drive to recall the President of Venezuela. We do not allow foreign financing of electoral campaigns in the United States. Clearly we should not insist on violating the laws of other countries, and their sovereignty and democracy, in ways that we would not permit here.
The list of countries that NED has been accused of meddling in regime change is vast. It includes Ukraine and Venezuela, as mentioned, but also Nicaragua with the election of Violeta Chamorro in 1990 and again in 2018. They meddled in Belarus in 2020 by backing opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. NED funded organizations such Universal Rights Supporting Families of Political Prisoners and other civil society groups and ‘independent media.’ They were involved in the 2001 coup in Haiti against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They also meddled in Bolivia, Cuba, Libya, Georgia, Serbia, Mongolia, and Kyrgyzstan.
NED brags on their website that they had, and likely still have, 330 projects in 11 countries with $38.5 million in funds in Central and Eastern Europe for FY2023. From their website:
While many post-communist countries in Eastern Europe have undergone democratic transformations and have become European Union (EU) and NATO members, the dream of a unified, peaceful, and democratic Europe remains unfulfilled. This aspiration is being challenged by the rise of autocratic models of governance, populism and nationalism, erosion of information integrity and sharp political polarization, as well as unresolved issues from the past.
Given the magnitude of the challenges that Europe is facing today, and especially Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NED’s steadfast support to democrats in countries across the region is more important than ever. Additionally, NED supports regional civil society and independent media networks that allow for cross-country collaboration and contribute to more effective advocacy with policymakers at the national and EU levels.
These “overt actions”, as described by the Washington Post, operate under the pseudonym of “promoting democracy,” but in reality, it’s more like a Congressionally-funded policy implementation in foreign countries.
Call it what you’d like: The Deep State, The Establishment, The Cabal…but the bottom line is that President Trump is landing blow after blow against them and clawing back taxpayer funds while helping promote global sovereignty by withdrawing US funded influence in foreign countries.
NED was next
This is epic. The Deep State and IC are getting HAMMERED right now!!
Keep it going!! https://t.co/eM866Pt34I pic.twitter.com/2uXl0BsjpH
— CannCon (@CannConActual) February 13, 2025
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