A federal judge has reversed Donald Trump’s attempt to dismantle state-funded international news broadcaster Voice of America, a target of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and the president’s far-right ally Kari Lake.
Senior District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C, ordered the administration to return more than 1,000 workers who were placed on administrative leave last year.
The judge had previously found that Lake — a former television news anchor who unsuccessfully ran for Arizona governor and U.S. Senate — was illegally serving in her role at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Voice of America’s parent agency.
“Lake satisfies the requirements of neither the statute nor the Constitution,” he wrote earlier this month.
In his order on Tuesday, Lamberth said Lake had “repeatedly thumbed her nose” at legal requirements set by Congress to staff the agency with a “flagrant and nearly year-long refusal” to do so.
Her cooperation with the case against the administration’s cuts has been a “Hallmark production in bad faith,” Lamberth wrote.
Trump’s executive order “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy” commanded federal agencies to strip down to the bare minimums, which brought Voice of America “to a standstill,” Lamberth wrote.
Voice of America — which broadcast in 49 languages to 362 million people before Trump’s cuts — employed 1,147 people and nearly 600 contractors when the agency was gutted, according to Lamberth.
Lake, who was brought on as “senior adviser to the CEO” of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, testified in the case that she was effectively delegated the CEO’s authority.
Without taking stock of what was needed to keep anything running, the agency “immediately began winding down the agency to only skeletal operations,” according to Lamberth.
More than 1,000 Voice of America staffers were indefinitely placed on leave on what became known as “bloody Sunday” at the agency. Three employees from Elon Musk’s DOGE team reportedly camped outside the agency to try to get their hands on the agency’s budget and social media accounts.
Under her watch, U.S. Agency for Global Media fired the director of Voice of America, laid off virtually all full-time workers, made a deal to carry content from right-wing media network One America News Network, and froze funding for Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, among other decisions that have been central to several overlapping legal battles.
In his previous order, Lamberth said such actions under her direction are “void.”
“The American people gave President Trump a mandate to cut bloated bureaucracy, eliminate waste, and restore accountability to government,” Lake said in a statement at the time. “An activist judge is trying to stand in the way of those efforts at USAGM. Judge Lamberth has a pattern of activist rulings — and this case is no different.”
Voice of America was first established in 1942 to transmit news, music and domestic programming across allied-captured territories during World War II before expanding across Europe and around the globe with pro-democratic content to counter local propaganda and disinformation during the Cold War and into the digital age.
During his first administration, Trump and his allies were accused of trying to manipulate outlets that promote the free flow of information around the world into built-in messaging platforms from the White House.
His first administration also marked a turbulent and toxic time for staff at the agency, which was overseen by Steve Bannon’s ally Michael Pack, who purged staff, dissolved advisory boards, replaced positions with Trump loyalists, refused to renew visas for foreign journalists, and reportedly interfered with news coverage.
The administration’s attempts to shutter the institution have also dovetailed with the president’s efforts to leverage the federal government against news organizations and journalists airing critical coverage he doesn’t like by hitting them with punishing lawsuits or threatening to revoke broadcast licenses.
Lake, a Trump loyalist who amplified his bogus claims about the 2020 election and refused to accept her own electoral losses, is now the latest among several Trump appointees to be disqualified from holding office.
Now-former U.S. Attorneys Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan stepped down from their roles after federal judges determined they were unlawfully serving as the top prosecutors in their respective states.
