President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday moved forward with sweeping layoffs at Voice of America (VOA) and other government-funded media outlets, despite ongoing legal battles and concerns that U.S. adversaries will benefit from the reduced American presence in global news.
Kari Lake, a staunch Trump supporter recently appointed to a senior role at the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), defended the cuts as a “long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”
In a statement, Lake said she plans to work with the State Department and Congress to ensure that “the telling of America’s story is modernized, effective, and aligned with America’s foreign policy.”
The mass layoffs follow a presidential order issued in March that froze VOA funding for the first time since the broadcaster’s founding in 1942. On Friday, termination notices were sent to 639 employees after earlier rounds of voluntary departures and contractor dismissals.
Lake reported that about 1,400 positions have been eliminated, leaving just 250 remaining across the agency.
The cuts include journalists from VOA’s Persian service, some of whom had been recently rehired following heightened tensions after Israel’s attack on Iran last week.
In response, several employees have filed a lawsuit challenging Lake’s actions, noting that Congress had already appropriated funding for these outlets.
“This decision spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds U.S. ideals of democracy and freedom worldwide,” stated the three plaintiffs—Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat, and Kate Neeper.
They warned: “Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and extremist groups are flooding the information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice.”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned the cuts, saying the “decimation of U.S. broadcasting leaves authoritarian propaganda unchecked by U.S.-backed independent media and is a perversion of the law and congressional intent.”
“It is a dark day for the truth,” Shaheen wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Trump has long criticized media outlets and dismissed VOA’s editorial firewall—designed to prevent government interference in news coverage—which he has occasionally claimed is too critical of his administration.
Among the few media outlets spared by the cuts is Radio Martí, which broadcasts to Cuba and receives strong backing from anti-communist Cuban-American Republican lawmakers.
Other government-funded outlets include Radio Free Asia, aimed at providing news to countries lacking a free press, though it is now operating on a limited scale.
Radio Free Europe, founded during the Cold War to provide independent news to Soviet bloc countries, has survived thanks to support from the Czech government.
AFP
