Hard to understand why Senator Sullivan continues to serve as IRI Board Chair given that the Senate has not even had hearings relating to the “woodchippering” of USAID, the freeze of State Department foreign assistance funding and the separate impoundment of appropriated funds for NED.

Nor is he reportedly willing to speak in any detail to the press or offer any public defense of NED or IRI under attack from Elon Musk and his X platform and laying off most staff due to the defunding.

What is a Board Chairman for?

The others who sit in both the Senate and on the IRI Board are Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst and Lindsey Graham.

All USAID implementation partners are in a terrible conflict not of their own making starting from the Musk “woodchippering” of USAID and accompanying assault through X on the weekend after the Inauguration. But IRI is also one of the four NED “core institutions” and a “Government Organized NGO” pursuant to legislation. IRI and it Board Members themselves are targets of the X-led digital smear campaign in support of the elimination of U.S. foreign assistance. If IRI leadership is unwilling to speak up to defend IRI, who else should be expected to.

Why should it fall on people like me, as private citizens, and in my case one with a mixed experience working for IRI years ago, to advocate for the underlying value and values served by democracy assistance and “mending not ending” the enterprise?

Of course it does need to be noted that IRI does raise private donations as a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) charitable, religious, educational or scientific organization. During my time, no private funds were available for our East Africa program activities as opposed to things such as Board activities or Washington approved extras that were not allowable costs to the Government. So the Board may be able to sustain itself separately from the actual democracy assistance programs?