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U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth gave the U.S. Agency
for Global Media a week to put together a plan for putting Voice
of America on the air. It has been operating with a skeleton
staff since President Donald Trump issued an executive order to
shut it down.
A week ago, Lamberth said Kari Lake, who had been Trump's choice
to lead the agency, did not have the legal authority to do what
she had done at Voice of America. In Tuesday's decision,
Lamberth ruled on the actions she had taken to respond to
Trump's order, essentially shelving 1,042 of VOA's 1,147
employees.
“Defendants have provided nothing approaching a principled basis
for their decision,” Lamberth wrote.
There was no immediate comment on the decision by the agency
overseeing Voice of America. Lake had denounced Lamberth's March
7 ruling, saying it would be appealed. Since then, Trump
nominated Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public
diplomacy, to run USAGM. That requires Senate approval, a step
that was not taken with Lake.
Patsy Widakuswara, Voice of America's White House bureau chief
and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to restore it, said she is deeply
grateful for the decision.
“We are eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has
inflicted on our agency and our colleagues, to return to our
congressional mandate, and to rebuild the trust of the global
audience we have been unable to serve for the past year,” she
said.
“We know the road to restoring VOA's operations and reputation
will be long and difficult,” she said. “We hope the American
people will continue to support our mission to produce
journalism, not propaganda.”
Voice of America has transmitted news coverage to countries
around the world since its formation in World War II, often in
countries with no tradition of a free press. Before Trump's
executive order, VOA had operated in 49 different languages,
broadcasting to 362 million people.
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