Federal judge restores Voice of America’s broadcast operations, orders 1,000 employees back to work

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter Voice of America are unlawful, ordering the government to restore operations at the congressionally funded international broadcaster and send more than 1,000 of its employees back to work for the first time in a year.

Tuesday’s decision by Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is a rebuke to the Trump administration, which has spent the past year trying to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other international broadcasters. 

The ruling comes more than a week after Judge Lamberth concluded in a separate decision that Kari Lake was ineligible to serve as USAGM’s acting CEO, a position in which she led the Trump administration’s push to dramatically scale back operations at VOA and other broadcasters.

Last March, Trump issued an executive order stating that USAGM, which was created by Congress, “shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Trump administration officials justified dismantling the agency by pointing to disagreements with the networks’ content, which, by statute, is produced independent of political interference. 

The order sparked several lawsuits from broadcasters and their employees challenging the funding cuts as unlawful and asking federal courts in Washington, D.C., and New York to block them from taking effect. 

Last spring, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed five friend-of-the-court briefs in support of those lawsuits. In each brief, the Reporters Committee emphasized that USAGM broadcasters have for decades been vital sources of news and information for hundreds of millions of people around the world, including many from countries where the news is otherwise dominated by state-controlled media. 

The briefs argued that the editorial independence of VOA and the other broadcasters is essential to their credibility, their mission, and the safety of their reporters — and that allowing the Trump administration to dismantle the broadcasters would sabotage the independence that makes them effective.

“If not stopped here, the Administration’s unilateral shuttering of VOA will put the entire model of federally funded networks at risk, not just today but well into the future,” the Reporters Committee argued in Abramowitz v. Lake and Widakuswara v. Lake. “And it will risk, too, the safety of reporters who have committed their careers to producing credible journalism under exceptionally challenging and dangerous conditions.”

Lamberth’s ruling concluded that the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle VOA were “arbitrary and capricious.” His order throws out a memorandum signed by USAGM officials last March that reduced VOA’s staff to what the judge described as a “skeletal operation[].” 

According to the order, 1,042 VOA employees who were placed on paid leave one year ago will be required to return to work on Monday. The ruling does not apply to the network’s contracted employees.