At times, President Trump's senior adviser Kari Lake has said she wants to shut down Voice of America, arguing it is rife with ideological bias and waste. Now, Lake says she'll keep the federally funded international network staffed at levels above those required by the law.
In her view, spelled out to Congress earlier this week, that means two people apiece to run foreign language services for Afghanistan, China and Iran and 11 people for Voice of America itself. The sister network that broadcasts to Cuba would retain 33 staffers.
In all, Lake envisions the agency that encompasses the international broadcasters with 81 people after mid-August — a sliver of the 1,300 she first put on paid leave in March. Lake says she is taking the actions to comply with Trump's March executive order that it be reduced to the minimum statutory requirements.
That very contention is being tested in federal court.
Yet the first few layoffs of the 800 permanent staffers — almost all of whom have been on indefinite paid leave for most of Trump's new term — began Thursday, according to three employees with knowledge of events. (They asked for anonymity to share developments, citing the lack of job security.) The roughly 500 contractors were paid through May 30, but their positions have been terminated.
"It's humanly impossible"
Former Voice of America leaders said that Lake's move to gut the workforce would be almost tantamount to killing the network.
"When you punch someone and leave them in the street for dead, how can you expect them to come back?" said Kelu Chao, who served in top positions at both Voice of America and its federal parent, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. "It's humanly impossible."
"Nobody should be under the illusion that with a staff that small, anything really effective can be done," former Voice of America Director David Ensor said. "It's an important source of soft power for the United States. And we are crazy to get rid of it."
Voice of America journalists expressed a fresh wave of outrage at the job cuts.
"The idea that you can make staff this size fulfill our mandate to provide accurate, objective, and comprehensive news to a global audience, is absurd," Patsy Widakuswara, who had been a White House bureau chief, said in a statement. "It would be comical if it weren't so tragic. My colleagues and I are not just losing our jobs and journalism, we are abandoning the 360 million people around the world who depend on us weekly for independent news and abdicating the United States' voice and influence in the world."
Widakuswara is a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against Lake and the Trump administration by a coalition of Voice of America employees, contractors, unions and press-rights advocates.
"This plan seeks to end a decades-long mission of providing news and information in repressive media environments around the world, particularly those targeted with propaganda by America's adversaries," said Kate Neeper, the director of strategy and performance at the U.S. Agency for Global Media. She, too, has been placed on indefinite leave and is suing Lake in the same case.
Lake sent her letter Tuesday to Sen. James Risch of Idaho and Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, the Republicans who lead the two Congressional committees on international matters. In that note, Lake said the plan to wipe out the workforce was devised by senior career leaders at USAGM, including its general counsel, Royce Min.
Min left the agency in early May. (Lake and Min did not respond to separate requests for comment.) According to materials attached to the memo Lake sent to Congress, the agency's chief financial officer signed the plan on March 18 — just days after Lake first put nearly the entire workforce on leave.
Back and forth in court
Lake was rebuked by the federal judge overseeing the VOA lawsuit and several related cases, but given a reprieve by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It lifted an injunction preventing her from carrying out her plans while it considers the substantive merits of the appeal.
Nonetheless, Lake is under order to ensure the agency and the network maintain the "statutory minimum" staff and services. The appellate court said that the Voice of America staffers suing Lake therefore could urge the federal judge on the case, Royce C. Lamberth, to compel the agency to show how it was meeting its statutory requirements, which include serving "as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news."
Late last week, the Voice of America plaintiffs did just that. "VOA sat silent for over a month until May 27, when VOA broadcast a mere five minutes of content to only three provinces in Afghanistan," the filing read. "That blip of activity is not enough to fulfill VOA's statutory mandate, and it does not mitigate Defendants' thus far inexorable march to shut down VOA."
Under Lake, the U.S. Agency for Global Media has canceled contacts with three major international news wires, set up an accelerated schedule to sell off its D.C. headquarters, and canceled a long-term lease in its new headquarters. Lake has struck a deal to offer programming from the far right One America News Network for use by Voice of America's remaining programmers and news executives.
Since the founding of the Voice of America during the early days of American involvement in World War II, Congress has funded it as an exercise in soft power: by having credible news coverage of the war, the Voice of America was intended to both put the lie to enemy propaganda and advertise U.S. values of political pluralism and tolerance for debate and dissent.
That philosophy was expanded to support its subsequent sister networks, which include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. (These networks are technically privately incorporated and receive grants allocated by Congress and administered by the U.S. Agency for Global Media.)
The appellate court ruled that Lake and the agency must provide the money Congress allocated for Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks in a timely way; they have embarked on mass furloughs as money has been withheld. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has received an infusion of millions of dollars from the European Union to keep it going temporarily. The agency says it will start doling out those funds.
Even so, the U.S. Agency for Global Media has canceled multiple satellite contracts for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, according to the network, including the ones that carry a popular round-the-clock Russian language service Current Time. The network has gone dark on TV, though it is continuing to reach audiences on YouTube.
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