Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., moved to defund the National Endowment for Democracy after a House Republican proposal for fiscal year 2026 included full funding for the agency at 2025 levels, even though President Donald Trump called for defunding it.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., the House Appropriations Committee member whose name appears at the top of the bill, defended NED funding in a statement to The Daily Signal after this article’s initial publication.
Taxpayer funding for international agencies like NED has received renewed scrutiny after the White House and the Department of Government Efficiency highlighted how much money the U.S. Agency for International Development had funneled to left-wing causes that do not promote American security. While agencies like NED and USAID have historically advanced American interests abroad, critics say they have promoted gender ideology, divisive racial programs, and regime change in recent years, undermining American interests.
“Have we learned nothing from the exposure of USAID over the past six months?” Crane told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “The National Endowment for Democracy is a government-backed NGO that has supported censorship programs, regime change politics, and fueled anti-American agendas abroad.”
“NED’s current board is made up of so-called ‘disinformation experts’ who played a key role in attacking the First Amendment, propping up the Russia hoax, and controlling the narrative around COVID-19,” Crane added.
“While President Trump requested no funding for the CIA cutout, House Republicans quietly slipped $315 million into the upcoming National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations bill,” he noted. “Hopefully, my amendment will end this disgusting waste of taxpayer resources and, at the very least, put representatives on the record.”
“NED may have had a noble beginning, but it has strayed FAR beyond its original mission,” Crane concluded.
Crane introduced his bill to defund the National Endowment for Democracy on Tuesday after J. Michael Waller, a senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, drew attention to the $315 million earmarked for the agency in the funding bill.
Diaz-Balart’s Defense
“The FY 2026 National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs bill aggressively advances President Trump’s America First agenda by cutting funding by 22%, all while strengthening the national security of the United States,” Diaz-Balart told The Daily Signal.
“Among its many achievements, it eliminates Biden-era wasteful and divisive programs on climate, gender, DEI, and other irrelevant programs that diluted the core mission of America’s foreign policy and worked against our national security interests,” the congressman added. “It also prohibits funding to the [World Health Organization], [United Nations] general fund, [United Nations Relief and Works Agency], and several other anti-American international organizations and supports American values and U.S. standing in the world by banning ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ programs that violate the free speech rights of American citizens.”
Critics have attacked the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (which provides aid in Gaza and reportedly has ties to Hamas) as left-leaning and counterproductive to America’s standing abroad.
Diaz-Balart also praised his bill for drawing “a clear line: allies are treated as allies, and enemies are treated as enemies.”
“Through the strategic use of NED, this bill doubles down on confronting hostile adversaries such as Communist China and Iran, two of President Trump’s highest national security priorities,” he added. “The underlying principles that guided the formation of this bill are what is best for American national security and for the American taxpayer.”
National Endowment for Democracy History
Congress established the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983 as a private nonprofit organization bankrolled by taxpayers. The NED supported democratic movements in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and elsewhere. It championed political representation, free market economics, trade unions, and a free press.
Critics say, however, that in recent years it has been weaponized against conservatives. Although the law requires the nonprofit to reflect “the diversity of American society,” Democrats almost exclusively lead and staff it, its public programs feature mostly Democrat speakers, and NED board members have sought to delegitimize the Republican Party.
Its grants have supported the “disinformation industrial complex,” funding the British-based Global Disinformation Index. The index has targeted American news outlets and provided a list to U.S. advertising companies. It labeled about 40 media outlets, including The Daily Signal and the Washington Examiner, as containing “false/misleading” information.” Its list of “riskiest” websites included RealClearPolitics, which publishes commentary from both the Right and the Left.
Anne Applebaum, a member of the NED’s board of directors, published a book presenting Trump as a near-authoritarian figure. She published an article three weeks before the 2024 election titled, “Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.” Robert Kagan, an NED adviser and editorial board member of the NED publication Journal of Democracy, wrote an article in The Washington Post titled, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.”
“It boggles the mind that House Republicans would reward NED for smearing President Trump as a Nazi, its discriminatory hiring practices, and acting as a DNC ally trying to unseat these very same Republican members,” Max Primorac, a former USAID official and currently senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, told The Daily Signal. “It’s not clear to me that even with leadership changes that NED is salvageable.”
The Daily Signal has reached out to the NED and Republicans associated with it for comment. They did not immediately respond to the requests, but this article will be updated with any response.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart sent in after publication.
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