President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have slashed U.S. democracy promotion funds and programs. Rubio’s reorganization gutted the nearly half-century-old Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, eliminating all but one of its offices and its employees working on democracy promotion.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was bloated, inefficient, and unfocused, but its demise left democracy promotion as collateral damage. Budget cuts also hobbled the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the vanguard of U.S. election monitoring abroad. Trump, meanwhile, openly admires dictators, cozying up to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin , lunching with Pakistani Army chief of staff Asim Munir,

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