In brief
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a longstanding nonprofit dedicated to promoting democracy globally, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government and high-ranking officials, claiming that a freeze on $239 million in congressional appropriations has crippled its operations. The board, which includes both current and former politicians from across the political spectrum, filed the lawsuit in Federal District Court in Washington as a last resort after multiple attempts to persuade the State Department to release the funds failed.
The funding freeze, enacted following an executive order by former President Trump, has led to a staggering 75 percent of the NED's staff being placed on unpaid leave, while approximately 1,200 grant recipients have been left without the funds essential for their ongoing projects since late January. In their court filings, NED representatives argue that the appropriated funds do not constitute foreign aid and should not be under the control of the State Department or any other executive agency, asserting that withholding these funds is illegal.Peter Roskam, chairman of NED and a former Republican congressman from Illinois, expressed hopes that the situation might be an inadvertent oversight, stating, "We’d be delighted to learn that this was just an oversight and someone just forgot to hit the send button." However, he implied that such a simple explanation was unlikely given the circumstances leading to the lawsuit.
