The national donation for democracy, a non -profit organization that had bilateral support for decades for the labor of the promotion of democracy abroad, is falsifying with government officials and the US Council of US Council for withholding $ 239 million to his credits.
Members of the Group’s Board of Directors, which includes today’s and former democratic and democratic legislators, said the Agency filed the lawsuit on Wednesday afternoon as a last resort because it was unable to get the Foreign Ministry to resume the flow of money.
The group also calls on a court to prevent the government from withholding any future funds available from Congress.
The team was forced to put about 75 % of their staff with a license and about 1,200 grant recipients did not receive money for projects since late January, after President Trump signed an executive order that freezes all external aid.
In the lawsuit, filed by the Federal Regional Court for the Columbia Region, the group argues that its money from Congress is not foreign aid and do not fall under the responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which manages the transfer of capital or any other executive. The withholding of funding, the members of the Board say, is illegal.
Peter Roskam, a former Republican Congress of Illinois, who is chairing the non -profit organization, said the Board of Directors voted on Tuesday to go to court.
“We will be happy to find out that this was just a supervision and someone just forgot to hit the shipping button,” he said in an interview on Wednesday, a few minutes before filing the lawsuit. “But clearly this is not what is happening.”
The difficulty of donation is emblematic of the colossal shift of foreign policy that takes place in the second administration of Trump, as the president is trying to move the government away from the work aimed at strengthening alliances, democracy and human rights to a more nationwide and nationwide.
Mr Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 elections he lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr. And the House of Representatives voted to violate him for the second time due to the incitement of riots to Capitol against legislators attesting to Mr Biden’s victory.
Some senior administration officials have adopted the language, including phrases that are once common among the progressive critics of the US government, on the disadvantage of US projects seeking to extend influences in all societies abroad, calling for such societies.
Representatives for the White House, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice did not respond to commentary requests.
Elon Musk, Mr Trump’s billionaire adviser, published aggressive criticism of national donation for democracy online last month, saying without proven that it was “full of corruption!” “This bad organization must be dismantled,” he wrote, using the same conspiracy language that has been concerned about describing the US service for international development, which Mr Musk has helped to disassemble.
Spokesman Elise Stefanik, a Republican of New York, who is the choice of Mr Trump for an ambassador to the United Nations, was at the National Council donation for the Republic until he retired to prepare for confirmation of the Senate for her new work. Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, is currently on the board.
Mr Trump’s “American First” policy has also been strongly relieved in recent weeks of his criticism of democratic Ukraine in its defensive struggle against Russia. The imposition of high invoices on two allies, Canada and Mexico. His insistence on getting Greenland rich in Denmark, another ally. and his decision to interrupt almost all American external reinforcements, which strategies have regarded as an important element of American soft power.
The grants of the national donation for democracy give it focus on the promotion of democracy, freedom of speech and religious freedoms in more than 100 countries and territories, including those whose first Trump administration and Biden administration regarded their opponents or opponents Venezuela and Cuba.
Grants funding projects such as software development that allows citizens to see forbidden websites and efforts to support independent journalism.
A recipient, China Labor Watch, a New York -based team with offices abroad, monitors the forced work and trafficking of Chinese workers. Its founder, Li Qiang, said in an interview that he had not received $ 150,000 national funding for democracy funds he was expecting this year and that most funding directly from the Foreign Ministry was still frozen. He had to dismiss workers or put them on his permission.
Mel Martinez, a former Republican Senator who represents Florida, said Trump’s reluctance to release funding for organizations that support overseas disagreement was exiled to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezu. “All this group of people is politically active,” he said. “Many were strong supporters of the president.”
In Venezuela, the national donation for the Republic is subsidizing the independent groups watching the election and helping to provide legal defense to dissidents targeted by the authoritarian government.
Authoritarian governments, including those of China and Russia, have denounced the work of donation for many years.
The lawsuit noted that the sudden interruption of funding further places the recipients living under a hostile government: “The freezing of funding funds poses a particular risk to the partners who operate in extremely authoritarian frameworks as their sudden interruption.
The team identifies its origin in a speech by President Ronald Reagan in the British Parliament in 1982 and swore that “March of Freedom and Democracy” will “leave Marxism-Leninism in the ash of history”. Congress has passed a law on the establishment of national donation for democracy next year.
The donation gives funding to various sister non -profit, notably the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute. These teams also end programs due to the freezing of funding. Several allies of Mr Trump’s Senate, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, are sitting on the International Council of the Republican Institute.
Foreign Minister Marco Rubio, a defendant, is a former member of the Board of Directors.
The Republican team’s website states that it had to disable its activities to save costs, but a page aims to remind people of the work it does: “Dictators are afraid of their people. Helping citizens have a voice in their country.”
Last November, a place in the group’s social media account, who is now frustrated, congratulates Mr Rubio on his choice to be Mr Trump’s foreign minister and named him “top champion of freedom”.
David Super, a professor studying administrative law at the University of Georgetown, said the national donation case for democracy had some similarities with a lawsuit filed by Contracting Companies for Trump’s USAID, also frozen its funds. In both cases, Mr Super said that Congress had passed “clear, compulsory authorized and credits.” The withholding money from the donation, he said, “clearly violates both laws”.
