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Donald Trump is continuing his assault on America’s democratic norms by ending funding for a three decade-old initiative aimed at spreading democracy in countries where it’s sorely lacking. That’s the narrative, anyway. On Sunday, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin reported that the State Department’s 2019 budget request is quietly going to slash funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and end its relationship with two of its chief grantees, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI). The move was described as an assault on their “pro-democracy mission,” and represented the US “turning its back on supporting brave people who share our values.” The idea that Trump was abandoning the US government’s “historic support for democracy promotion” quickly spread. The New Republic interpreted it as an effort to undermine an agency tasked with “promot[ing] democracy and human rights abroad,” part of “Trump’s disdain for democracy promotion.” And it makes sense. Gutting an agency whose sole mission is to help spread democracy and human rights is exactly the kind of thing Trump would do. Except that’s never been all the NED is. This isn’t the first time politicians have attempted to defund the NED. It’s faced at least three attempts to defund it through the 1980s and 90s. The prospective defunders in those instances weren’t authoritarian rightists like Trump, but liberal Democrats, who were supported in this effort by the Nation and liberals like columnist Mary McGrory. Meanwhile, its supporters included the Heritage Foundation, Wall Street Journal, conservative columnists George Will and Charles Krauthammer, and Iraqi scholar Kanan Makiya, who played a key role in advocating for George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. There’s a good reason for this. Simply put, the NED has since its inception been more of a tool for US political interests than an inoffensive vehicle for democracy promotion, an instrument for overtly carrying out the kinds of influence operations the CIA used to carry out covertly. That’s not to say the NED is all bad of course. It has always supported the kind of humdrum activities needed to conduct free elections, such as poll watching and voter registration. And it’s supported movements like Poland’s Solidarity, the various anti-Milošević groups in former Yugoslavia, the pro-democracy side in Chile’s referendum, and provided support and training for the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. But by and large, the NED’s role has been to shape the domestic politics of other countries in ways conducive to the interests of US policymakers, which more often than not has been in an anti-left direction.