Power Grab/Fire anyone who can stop him
Trump shut down Voice of America by executive order, and a judge has twice ruled the shutdown unlawful
A March 14, 2025 order cut the U.S. Agency for Global Media to its statutory minimum and stopped broadcasts for the first time since 1942. Judge Royce Lamberth has since vacated both the downsizing and Kari Lake’s authority to carry it out; the government has appealed.
What happened
On March 14, 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Agency for Global Media, parent of Voice of America, to shrink to the minimum the statute requires. The next day more than 1,300 VOA employees and contractors were placed on paid leave or terminated, offices were padlocked, and broadcasts stopped for the first time since 1942.
On April 22, 2025, Judge Royce Lamberth ordered staff restored, finding “an absence of any analysis whatsoever” behind the decision. The agency moved instead toward a reduction in force in August 2025. Kari Lake, named a senior adviser, effectively ran the agency.
On March 7, 2026, Lamberth ruled that Lake had unlawfully exercised the chief executive’s authority and vacated the August reduction in force. On March 17 he vacated the March 2025 downsizing itself, citing the government’s “flagrant and nearly year-long refusal” to follow the statutes. The government appealed to the D.C. Circuit.
Who benefited
The White House removed a federally funded newsroom whose charter required “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” reporting, including on the U.S. government. Kari Lake, a two-time losing Arizona candidate, was handed control of an agency with a budget of roughly $950 million, about $260 million of it VOA’s, without Senate confirmation.
Who wanted something
Trump had long called VOA biased, and Lake had told employees the agency was “unsalvageable.” The White House described the order as cutting “frivolous expenditures,” part of a push to close agencies by executive action rather than through Congress.
Who lost out
Audiences in countries without a free press lost broadcasts that VOA and Radio Free Asia carry in dozens of languages. VOA journalists lost their jobs or their pay, and some faced deportation when their visas lapsed. Congress’s appropriations and governance structure for international broadcasting were overridden for a year.
Why it matters
The administration shut a congressionally created institution by order and kept it shut through litigation, including after losing in court. The March 2026 rulings found both the person in charge and the shutdown itself unlawful. By then VOA had been dark for most of a year.
Sources NPRU.S. District Court for D.C. (via CourtListener) (primary)CourtListener (primary)CBS News