Trump's Cuts Silenced Voice of America in 49 Languages While Taxpayers Paid Idle Staff

A Funded Broadcaster Went Silent

On March 14, 2025, Donald Trump ordered the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the federal agency that oversees Voice of America (VOA), to shrink.¹ The next day, March 15, he signed the law that funded its broadcasts, and the agency began implementing the cuts.²³ His appointees carried out his order by stopping every VOA broadcast and sidelining most of the workforce.¹³ The service had broadcast in 49 languages to approximately 362 million people a week, figures the government did not substantively dispute in court.³ Congress had funded international broadcasting operations at $857,214,000 for fiscal 2025 and required the agency to follow its broadcasting standards and protect journalistic independence.⁴²

On March 17, 2026, Judge Royce C. Lamberth found the shutdown unlawful: agency leaders had offered no analysis of how their staffing plan could meet Congress's requirements and had refused for nearly a year to perform mandatory duties.³ By July 2026, VOA was broadcasting in seven languages, and 420 USAGM employees remained on paid administrative leave at a cost the agency estimated at $3.2 million every two weeks.⁵

Three facts tie the shutdown to Trump. His order named seven federal entities, USAGM among them, and required their statutory functions and personnel to be cut to "the minimum presence and function required by law."¹ In December 2024 he had announced Kari Lake as the next VOA director, according to his post reproduced in the plaintiffs' complaint, and she went on to exercise nearly all of the USAGM chief executive's powers.⁶⁷ And in a statement published July 22, 2025, Lake said her goal was to "shut the entire agency down as per the instructions of President Trump"; Lamberth contrasted that with the defendants' assurances in court that they intended to operate VOA under its statutory mandate.⁸

The order itself required implementation consistent with applicable law and did not expressly direct VOA to stop broadcasting.¹ Lake and the agency's leadership chose that implementation, which Lamberth found had brought USAGM to a standstill in response to the President's order.³

What Congress Required

Voice of America began broadcasting in February 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda.⁹³ Congress wrote its charter into law in 1976 and reenacted it in 1994.¹⁰⁹ The charter requires accurate, objective and comprehensive news, a balanced account of American institutions and thought, and presentation and discussion of U.S. government policies.¹⁰ The same law provides that USAGM shall continue to exist in the executive branch and requires its chief executive to respect the broadcasters' professional independence and integrity.¹⁰

The fiscal 2025 appropriation expressly tied the money to those broadcasting standards and independence provisions.⁴² This was a funded statutory duty, not a program whose money had run out.⁴²¹⁰ The appropriation also required broadcasting hours into North Korea to remain at least at the prior fiscal year's level.⁴² Yet in an August 30, 2025 response to Congress reproduced by the inspector general, USAGM acknowledged that it was broadcasting no content into North Korea through any medium and said it had decided to take steps to restart.⁵

Lake Exercised the Power

Lake never became VOA director.⁷ Lamberth recorded that Trump removed six of the seven International Broadcasting Advisory Board members in January 2025, leaving the board without the quorum needed to approve replacing the incumbent VOA director with Lake.⁷ She joined USAGM on February 27, 2025 as senior advisor to its acting chief executive, Victor Morales, and on March 5 he delegated to her all but three of the chief executive's 22 statutory authorities.⁷ She became deputy chief executive in July, with a materially identical delegation.⁷ The statute requires presidential appointment and Senate consent for the chief executive.¹⁰

On March 15, Lake decided to terminate VOA's personal-service contractors, and agency leadership directed VOA to cease programming and shut down its transmitters.³ The agency placed 1,042 of its 1,147 full-time employees on leave and notified 598 contractors that their agreements would end March 31, facts treated as undisputed in the litigation.³ Every grantee network received a letter terminating its grants.¹¹ A March 18 staffing memorandum identified 68 employee or contractor positions to retain, excluding Senior Executive Service members, without analyzing whether that staffing could meet the broadcasting mandate.³

On March 7, 2026, Lamberth held that Lake's service as acting chief executive, in fact or in name, violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and the Appointments Clause.⁷ She had not been first assistant when the vacancy arose, and the delegations unlawfully made her chief executive in all but name.⁷ He declared void her actions under the March and July delegations and during her asserted tenure as acting chief executive from July 31 to November 19, 2025, including the August 29 layoffs.⁷ On May 14, he denied reconsideration of his ruling that delegated acts could not be ratified.¹²

That opinion describes Lake sending layoff notices Morales had refused to send, and working directly with the White House to have him placed on leave and increase her own authority.¹² It records her testimony that only the President and God supervised her, with Morales added later as an afterthought.¹²

No Analysis Behind the Cuts

The shutdown lost in court on a basic point: the staffing memorandum listed jobs but did not analyze whether the remaining staff could meet the standards Congress had set.³

Lamberth first ordered VOA programming restored on April 22, 2025, in a preliminary injunction that found likely violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and of the President's duty to execute the law faithfully.¹¹ On March 17, 2026, he decided the Administrative Procedure Act claims on the merits and granted judgment for the plaintiffs, except certain contractors.³ He found both arbitrary agency action and unlawful withholding of required agency action.³ He canceled the memorandum, the March 2025 decision placing 1,042 employees on leave, the suspension of broadcasts, and the termination of noncontractor staff.¹³

The Case for Reform, and Its Limits

The administration had a real case for reform. In its October 2021 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said annual auditors had identified weaknesses in grantee-monitoring controls in each fiscal year since 2013 and warned of greater risk of fraud, waste and abuse.¹⁴ USAGM justified its cuts by alleging waste, fraud, abuse and national-security problems, and the White House accused VOA of spreading propaganda; GAO's monitoring findings did not substantiate the separate allegations about spies or terrorist sympathizers.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁴

The President also has substantial authority: the Supreme Court's government-speech doctrine permits the government to choose its own message, and VOA's statute links broadcasting to U.S. foreign-policy objectives and requires government editorials.¹⁷¹⁰ Lake invoked those provisions in December 2025 when she directed staff to use the National Security Strategy to guide interviews, story selection and coverage.¹⁸ GAO and the inspector general had found the journalistic-independence rules poorly defined before this administration, and the independence subsection specifies neither a violation nor a remedy.¹⁴¹⁹¹⁰ The President has broad removal power, reinforced by the Supreme Court's June 2026 decision in Trump v. Slaughter, and agencies have discretion over lump-sum appropriations within statutory restrictions.²⁰²¹ In July 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the administration's broader workforce-reduction framework to proceed while expressly declining to judge individual agency plans.²² Lamberth himself acknowledged that lawful reductions could occur and declined to set a fixed staffing benchmark.²³

Those powers did not erase Congress's broadcasting requirements or cure Lake's unlawful exercise of the vacant chief executive's authority.⁴⁷ What Lamberth found was an unexplained staffing plan and a failure to perform funded duties.³

The government also argued that programming had long been restored.²⁴ The March 2026 opinion described four substantially reduced language services and Russian and Korean digital programming, with only Pashto and Dari carried by radio.³

The government's strongest legal objection concerned which court could hear the dispute: federal personnel claims ordinarily follow the civil-service review system, and Lamberth agreed that the named contractors' requests to reinstate or enforce their individual agreements belonged in the Court of Federal Claims; he retained jurisdiction over their challenge to the underlying staffing memorandum.³²⁵ It relied on those objections and declined to defend the merits of the Administrative Procedure Act claims.²⁶ It also argued that district judges cannot reissue relief the appeals court has stayed.²⁴ Lamberth distinguished the failure to operate a legally mandated agency from individual employment and payment claims.³

The administration won pauses on the employee-return orders in May 2025 and March 2026; the appeals court restored the grant-funding requirement in May 2025 and left cancellation of the underlying shutdown decisions in place in March 2026.^3232728 In September 2026, Lamberth's shutdown findings still awaited appellate review and could be overturned; the merits appeals were paused pending a related full-court decision.³²⁸²⁹

Withheld Information and Repetitive Reports

In July 2025, Lamberth found that agency leaders had repeatedly withheld the full story about personnel actions and supplied misleading and contradictory information.⁸ Their contradictory shortwave accounts and omitted plans left him to learn through litigation of an effort to eliminate more than 600 positions and remove VOA director Michael Abramowitz.⁸ That September, he suspended a reduction in force affecting more than 500 employees and said disregard of his information orders would support a civil-contempt trial; he made no contempt finding and imposed no sanction.²³

After the March 2026 judgment, Lamberth required reports every 14 days and granted an enforcement motion on May 14 when the agency initially failed to submit them.²⁸ The reports that followed repeated the argument that canceling the shutdown decisions required no concrete action; on September 18, he described them as nearly identical and largely uninformative.²⁸

Agency lawyers said new leadership had taken over and operations had changed; they represented that 105 employees had returned, possibly including new hires.²⁸ Lamberth said this could reflect new policies or simply abandonment of the canceled decisions.²⁸ He ordered the agency to produce the materials guiding its current operations so that he could decide whether the changes had made the case moot, denied four other information requests without prejudice and scheduled further briefing beyond October 10, 2026.²⁸³⁰

The Promised Savings Were Not Demonstrated

In a report issued in September 2026, State's inspector general found that USAGM could not demonstrate that its reductions considered costs and benefits, reliable evidence, service continuity or strategic workforce planning.⁵ Implementation-team members told the inspector general that DOGE and USAGM's front office made key reorganization decisions without consulting them; one member said they were removed from the team after raising concerns about disregarded collective-bargaining agreements.⁵ Legal proceedings had prevented anticipated payroll savings, and as of July 30, 420 affected employees were still on paid leave at USAGM's estimated cost of $3.2 million every two weeks.⁵

The agency rescinded June 2025 layoff notices to 639 employees because of errors.⁵ On August 28, Trump issued another order stripping USAGM employees of collective-bargaining rights; the next day, USAGM terminated the unions' agreements, which required 60 days' notice of potential layoffs, and issued revised notices to 532 employees.²³⁷ Lamberth later declared that layoff effort void.⁷ It moved into a former NASA building after internal experts warned the building would not meet broadcasting needs, then moved back after spending taxpayer resources on the move, the inspector general found.⁵ It canceled contracts needed to operate, then began restoring contracts, hiring and recalling staff, and buying equipment.⁵ Reversing some cancellations added taxpayer costs, the inspector general found, without supplying a dollar total.⁵

Who Lost the Broadcasts, and What Returned

The inspector general found that the reductions weakened USAGM's ability to provide accurate information in countries with repressive media environments.⁵ The agency's August 2025 admission of no broadcasting into North Korea, despite the statutory floor described in 1.2, was one such gap.⁵ VOA halted production of new content in all 49 languages, including the Chinese, Afghan and Iranian services the agency itself considered legally required.⁵ Lamberth reported in July 2025 that every Africa Division language service had been eliminated and nearly all regional broadcasting had been dark for months.⁸ By July 2026, VOA broadcast in seven languages: Mandarin, Korean, Dari, Pashto, Kurdish Sorani, Kurdish Kurmanji and Persian.⁵

Persian programming resumed after U.S. and Israeli military action against Iran in June 2025.⁵ A subsequent staffing cut left the service with two employees, one without the language proficiency to broadcast, according to officials interviewed by the inspector general; by July 6, 2026, it had 66.⁵ USAGM told Congress in July that it planned further Persian, Korean and Russian programming expansion.⁵

Other services also lost airtime and recovered in part.⁵ The Office of Cuba Broadcasting stopped on March 15, 2025, resumed on March 26, and by July 2026 was operating around the clock.⁵ An agency official told the inspector general that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) had to stop each of its 27 language services at some point in 2025, including Ukrainian and Russian during Russia's invasion; it returned to 24 languages in 2026.⁵ Radio Free Asia (RFA) stopped radio and satellite transmission at the end of March 2025 and was broadcasting in seven languages by July 2026.⁵ Middle East Broadcasting Networks halted broadcasting in June 2025 and shifted to digital content.⁵ RFE/RL and RFA resumed services only after federal courts ordered USAGM to release their congressionally appropriated fiscal 2025 funding, the inspector general reported.⁵

The agency canceled audience research and tracking, undermining its ability to measure whom its remaining programs reached and what they achieved.⁵ Officials were trying to restart those activities in July, but told the inspector general the lost data could not be recovered.⁵

Cuts Damaged the Controls Against Waste

The inspector general found that staffing losses weakened accounting controls and the agency's ability to support its financial audit.⁵ The independent auditor could not express an opinion on USAGM's fiscal 2025 financial statements because it lacked sufficient evidence on significant items including property, payroll and budgetary resources.⁵³¹ The auditor also found a material weakness in financial-reporting controls and noncompliance with the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act and OMB Circular A-123: USAGM had not assessed its internal controls' effectiveness as required.³¹ Lake signed the agency's acknowledgment that management could not assure that internal control was operating effectively as of September 30, 2025.³¹

In a July audit of property-disposal transactions, recounted in the September evaluation, the inspector general found that USAGM could not document disposal of 1,512 of 1,531 sampled items and supplied only partial documentation for the other 19.⁵ Cybersecurity eroded too: an official told the inspector general the agency could no longer effectively operate its security center's round-the-clock monitoring, and officials described efforts to restore contracts, staff and defensive capabilities.⁵

USAGM accepted all six recommendations in the September evaluation.⁵ The agency said corrective work was already underway, including an internal draft strategic plan and hiring under an Office of Personnel Management-approved plan.⁵ The inspector general treated the recommendations as resolved pending further action, requiring evidence of implementation before closing them.⁵

Congress Funded Operations Instead of Closure

After the court's April 2025 injunction, USAGM asked Congress for $153 million to close the agency in fiscal 2026: $77.5 million in personnel costs, $73.5 million to wind down operations and $2 million for facility operations until closure.³² Congress instead appropriated $643 million for operations, and Trump signed that law on February 3, 2026.³³ That was less than the previous $857,214,000, but it funded an operating agency, not the requested shutdown.³³⁴³²

Congress Must Judge the Abuse

Voice of America was not the only broadcaster Trump targeted.³⁴ Judge Randolph D. Moss declared Sections 1 and 3(a) of Trump's NPR/PBS funding order unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and retaliation, and permanently barred the agency defendants from enforcing them; the decree excluded the President, and the government did not appeal.³⁴³⁵³⁶ The claims concerning Sections 3(b) and 3(c) were dismissed without prejudice, without a ruling on their merits.³⁷³⁶ Congress separately approved Trump's requested $1.07 billion rescission of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) through the lawful process, and he signed it.^38394041 CPB dissolved; Current reported that WEIU lost its over-the-air television, while WBGU handed PBS responsibilities to WGTE and kept viewers' access.^3736424344

The Constitution authorizes impeachment and removal for treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors; the House Judiciary Committee's 1974 staff analysis included serious failure to discharge the President's affirmative constitutional duties among potentially impeachable conduct.⁴⁵⁴⁶ Criminal immunity concerns prosecution of a President's official conduct; impeachment is Congress's separate constitutional process.⁴⁷⁴⁵

Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment, on charges that included blocking three statutes and preventing Edwin Stanton from resuming office, ended in acquittal; the Supreme Court later reasoned that the removal restriction was invalid, although that statute was not before it.⁴⁸⁴⁶⁴⁹ In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted no impoundment article against Richard Nixon, although its abuse-of-power article included conduct contrary to executive agencies' laws and purposes.⁵⁰

Trump ordered a reduction, and the leadership he chose carried it out by silencing a broadcaster Congress had required and funded.¹³ A judge found the shutdown unlawful; in July 2026 VOA still broadcast in seven languages instead of 49; and the cuts weakened the agency's own accounting controls.³⁵ Congress kept funding operations, while taxpayers paid hundreds of employees barred from doing their jobs and the agency struggled to rebuild capabilities it had dismantled.³³³⁵ This belongs in an impeachment case because presidential direction produced a refusal to perform Congress's funded mandate and serious documented harm.³⁵ While the courts continue to decide the agency's legal obligations, Congress must judge that abuse of public power.^45463305