The Free Press
Last week, Free Presser Eli Lake reported that an order from the DOGE to the U.S. Treasury had blocked the disbursement of funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a government-funded organization tasked with promoting democracy around the globe.
“It’s been a bloodbath,” one NED staffer told Eli, revealing that the organization couldn’t meet payroll or basic overhead costs. Eli argued that NED was far from perfect, but its shutdown would be a mistake.
“For the right to turn against civil society groups that stand up to pro-Moscow authoritarians, formerly a proud conservative cause, is stunning,” wrote Eli.
Eli’s piece sparked a lot of debate among our readers, with many seeing NED as just the kind of bloated public body the DOGE should target. One of them was our friend and Spectator World editor-at-large Ben Domenech. He responded to Eli on his Substack, The Transom, and we’re republishing the post here:
Eli Lake has a piece in The Free Press complaining that Donald Trump (via Elon Musk) is defunding the National Endowment for Democracy, a prominent CIA front group that has been one of the worst actors on press freedom over the past several years and deserves not one dime of taxpayer funds.
It’s inevitable that divides are going to emerge within the Trumpian coalition as the team he has in place goes after exactly the same NGOs which took sides against him personally, and escalated their targeted attempts to silence and sideline conservative/contrarian groups during the pandemic, given that many of them employ the vestiges of a neocon Republican foreign policy establishment that once played nice with the blob. This is one such example.
Here’s a report from September by the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky—who has been all over the story in multiple articles (here, here, here)—outlining how NED funded to the tune of millions the efforts to smear journalists and online entities, and attack the funding and advertising supporting them based on fraudulent claims, illegally attempting to influence (successfully) American media:
The 66-page report was prepared by investigators on the Republican-led House Small Business Committee. For over a year, the panel has sought sprawling funding records from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center on its programs fighting alleged disinformation and misinformation. That investigation began due to a series of Washington Examiner reports on the office bankrolling the Global Disinformation Index—a British group pressuring advertisers to defund right-of-center media outlets in the U.S.
The release of the report comes as the Global Engagement Center, which has an estimated budget of $61 million and a staff of 125, faces the potential to lose funding over GOP-led frustrations about its involvement with apparent domestic censorship groups. A provision through the annual State Department appropriations bill, which passed the House this summer and will be negotiated in the Senate, aims to ban future checks to the GEC. The office is also facing a lawsuit from conservative media outlets over the $100,000 the GEC sent to GDI and its support of a company called NewsGuard that rates the “misinformation” levels of news outlets.
Titled Instruments and Casualties of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, the House report argues the GEC promoted “tech start-ups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space to private sector entities with domestic censorship capabilities.” Moreover, the report argues the National Endowment for Democracy, a State Department–funded nonprofit group that awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to GDI, “violated its international restrictions by collaborating with fact-checking entities in assessing domestic press businesses’ admission to a credibility organization.”
More here from Jonathan Turley. I don’t care if Eli thinks NED was a good guy during the Cold War—that’s like saying the FBI was the good guys during Prohibition; it’s another bloated D.C. entity that weaponized the opinions of the likes of Anne Applebaum to deliberately target American journalists with smears and lies. It deserves no support whatsoever from the American taxpayer, who currently pays its president—a former intern to Susan Rice—more than the president of the United States. Go get your funding from shining Alexander Soros’s shoes like a typical gross international nonprofit.
The weaponization of places like NED has had a deleterious effect on the trust of Americans for the institutions they once thought were responsive to the American people, and ultimately their efforts to censor backfired when seen in the light of day thanks to the likes of Kaminsky, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger. That’s a good thing.
And here’s Eli’s response to Ben:
Ben, we agree that the grant for the UK-based disinformation hokum was terrible. But that is a single grant. And NED severed the relationship. We also agree that the international NGO world is rife with nonsense and corruption. But NED is primarily focused on quietly and efficiently funding Iranians, Cubans, Chinese, and others who share our indigenous American distaste for despots and tyrants. Such people are the only real allies we have in those countries. I don’t oppose an audit, or even reform. But starving NED is cruel and feckless.
Also, the National Endowment for Democracy is not a CIA “front group.” This would mean that the CIA controls NED, which it does not. It was created in part so American support for democracy movements abroad would not be cloaked in state secrecy, but out in the open. NED grantees must apply for funding; they are not recruited. The CIA gave out bags of cash to political parties; NED trains political parties in election law. These are important distinctions.
Anyway, we agree that there is waste to trim and the anti-disinformation industry is a racket, but what does this have to do with finding and helping the next Iranian Václav Havel?
In Freedom and Solidarity,
Eli
How do men feel when pregnancies end? It’s a strangely taboo question to ask—but that’s exactly what Kat Rosenfield did in reporting her profoundly moving essay, “The Men Who Lost Their Babies.” Her story resonated with a number of readers. Below is one response that stood out to us, from Michael Hickman:
We lost Baby Frances on New Year’s Day 2023. It was just two months after leaving our support system in Texas for the wilderness of New York City. Handling the physical reality of a miscarriage was challenging. The doctor offered vague descriptions of the natural process. “There will be a lot of blood.” She pushed us toward a D&C, which were only performed on Saturdays at her clinic. After speaking with the priest that married us, we were willing to do this procedure. The doctor wouldn’t guarantee that we could leave with the remains, though. As Roman Catholics, it was important that we treated the baby’s life with the full dignity of a human person, including the physical remains. While trying to find alternative providers, the natural expulsion started. The blood loss was hard to believe. In hindsight, the ER wasn’t necessary, but we were woefully unprepared for this step. Thanks to an amazing nurse, we walked out of the hospital eight overnight hours later with the remains.
Baby Frances then sat in the freezer for weeks while we tried to find a final resting place. Funeral directors were baffled by our request. The managers at Woodlawn Cemetery wouldn’t bury the baby without documentation of a pregnancy and miscarriage by the State of New York. This proved to be a futile effort, because no doctor would certify that my wife had been both pregnant and had miscarried because the physical passing of the fetus occurred naturally (sort of. . . in the ER). It was disheartening that the obstetrics and funeral industries in NYC were so oblivious to the needs of families that they wouldn’t treat a miscarried baby as fully human.
Finally, it occurred to me to go to the source of the teachings that led us to this point: the church. The archdiocese of New York had a bereavement office, and I made a phone call. This eventually led to St Patrick’s Old Cathedral downtown, and a designated tomb for burying the unborn in the mausoleum.
Kat’s piece resonated in many ways. The feel of the remains in my hands as we finally placed Baby Frances in a small box made the experience intensely physical. As you note, it’s “not nothing” in the womb. Confronting that physical something rarely occurs. For most parents, it’s treated as medical waste. I’m glad that wasn’t the case for us.
Thank you for this story.
On Super Bowl Sunday, Deputy Managing Editor Joe Nocera wrote an open letter to Kansas City Chiefs fans with some advice on “how to be hated.” Joe imparted everything he’d learned as a dedicated fan of the despised New England Patriots, who won six Super Bowls in the Tom Brady era. And his words resonated with none other than Robert Kraft, the chairman and CEO of the Patriots, who wrote Joe the following letter. (Mr. Kraft, if you’re reading this, an intern will be in touch about getting Mr. Nocera his box seats—thank you so much!)
Dear Joe,
I would be remiss had I not written to you in response to your February 9th article, “How to Be Hated: A Patriots Fan’s Advice to Chiefs Nation.”
After having read your piece, it was incumbent upon me to personally share my appreciation with you for your public support of the New England Patriots. On behalf of our team, thank you for your passion and commitment to our organization over the years. Your empathy is special and most appreciated, particularly in light of your existence in enemy territory. I found the “humblebrag” rather amusing, but valuable advice nonetheless.
Now that Super Bowl LIX is behind us, I am very excited about next season and what I believe the trajectory of the team is. Hopefully, you can dust off that Patriots 34, Atlanta 28 jersey to proudly don as we breathe new life into this 2025 New England Patriots team. Until then, I appreciate your long-term investment and look forward to reading your future Super Bowl LX article with optimism.
Sincerely,
Robert K. Kraft
