Donald Trump is continuing his assault on America’s democratic norms by ending funding for a three decade-old initiative aimed at spreading democracy in countries where it’s sorely lacking.

That’s the narrative, anyway. On Sunday, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin reported that the State Department’s 2019 budget request is quietly going to slash funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and end its relationship with two of its chief grantees, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI). The move was described as an assault on their “pro-democracy mission,” and represented the US “turning its back on supporting brave people who share our values.”

The idea that Trump was abandoning the US government’s “historic support for democracy promotion” quickly spread. The New Republic interpreted it as an effort to undermine an agency tasked with “promot[ing] democracy and human rights abroad,” part of “Trump’s disdain for democracy promotion.”