A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that President Donald Trump should restore Voice of America (VOA), a state-run news service that was “illegally” halted by the administration several weeks ago.
US District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the Trump administration to restore the 83-year-old broadcaster’s capacity to the levels before it slashed funding and laid off hundreds of personnel in mid-March.
Lamberth said the cuts reflected a “hasty, indiscriminate approach”.
The court filing in March stated that all 1,300 employees had been placed on administrative leave. Staff working on a contractual basis received an email notifying them that they would be terminated at the end of March.
Contractors make up much of VOA’s workforce and dominate staffing in the non-English language services, although recent figures were not immediately available.
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Many contractors are not US citizens, meaning those who depend on work visas to stay in the US most likely would have left the country already, or would be leaving the country.
Most full-time VOA staff were not immediately terminated but were on administrative leave and have been told not to work.
The agency had 3,384 employees in the 2023 fiscal year. It had requested $950m for the current fiscal year.
Court case
Lawyers for VOA said that the broadcaster seeks to report the news “truthfully, impartially, and objectively”, pushing back against claims from the Trump administration that it promotes a “leftist bias” and is insufficiently “pro-American”.
Judge Lamberth also ordered the administration to restore the capacity of two other broadcasters also funded by the federal US Agency for Global Media, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, while those lawsuits progress.
The judge denied a similar request for two additional networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Open Technology Fund.
The Trump administration has worked to dismantle programmes and agencies within the government that it deems not ideologically aligned and force media organisations and universities to comply with government ideology under the premise of combatting what the administration portrays as “left-wing” views.
Trump had also signed an executive order targeting VOA’s parent agency, the US Agency for Global Media, in his sweeping cuts.
A labour union representing workers at the US Agency for Global Media celebrated the ruling as a “powerful affirmation of the role that independent journalism plays in advancing democracy and countering disinformation”.
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Voice of America was founded by Congress during World War II as an American news network to broadcast into territory held by the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan.
During the Cold War, it was designed to broadcast western news to people living behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union. However, it also broadcast across the Global South, where the US and Soviet Union competed for influence. It led some to criticise the network as a propaganda tool to promote US interests and aligned ideologies around the world.
“That simple mission [delivering impartial news] is a powerful one for those living across the globe without access to a free press and without the ability to otherwise discern what is truly happening,” lawyers for VOA wrote.
The move underscores how the Trump administration is tearing up the traditional pillars of American diplomacy and soft power across the globe as it looks to re-establish a new order with great powers like Russia and China.
However, some parts of the world welcomed the shuttering of VOA. China’s state-run Global Times lauded VOA’s closure in an opinion article, saying that “the monopoly of information held by some traditional Western media is being shattered”.
“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multidimensional China, the demonizing narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughingstock of the times,” the article said.
Many other institutions created during the post-war era to project US political and cultural influence around the world, such as the humanitarian assistance agency USAID, have also come under attack by a Trump administration that sees them as ideological enemies or sources of bureaucratic bloat.
