USAGM Watch Commentary
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 820,000 government workers, and many U.S. and international media reported this week that “journalists, federal workers, and their unions sued the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), its Acting Director Victor Morales, and Special Adviser Kari Lake to challenge,” as AFGE noted “the unlawful shuttering of the agency and silencing of global media.”
Journalists, Federal Workers, and Unions File Lawsuit to Challenge Closure of U.S. Agency for Global Media | AFGE
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a grantee of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, sued the agency, as well as USAGM officials Kari Lake and Victor Morales, as RFE/RL said, “to block their attempted termination of RFE/RL’s federal grant.”
RFE/RL Sues USAGM to Block Termination of Federal Grant | RFE/RL
Radio Free Asia (RFA) RFA’s President and CEO Bay Fang said in a statement, “The termination of RFA’s grant is a reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space.”
RFA has been foundational in helping U.S. policymakers understand the reality of what’s happening in China and other closed countries, bringing transparency and accountability where there is none. RFA’s breakthrough reporting in Xinjiang led the first Trump Administration to make its declaration of genocide against the Chinese government.
Today’s notice not only disenfranchises the nearly 60 million people who turn to RFA’s reporting on a weekly basis to learn the truth, but it also benefits America’s adversaries at our own expense. We plan to challenge this short-sighted order and pursue whatever means necessary to continue our work and protect our courageous journalists.
RFA President: RFA’s cancellation a boon to the Chinese Communist Party | RFA
USAGM Senior Adviser, Kari Lake said in a statement published on the agency’s website:
The US Agency for Global media will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview and shed everything that is not statutorily required. I fully support the President’s executive order. Waste, fraud, and abuse run rampant in this agency and American taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund it.
USAGM also oversees six entities: two federal organizations — the Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which oversees Radio and TV Martí — and five non-profit organizations — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, the Open Technology Fund, and the Frontline Media Fund — which receive grants from USAGM. USAGM also provides multimedia broadcast distribution, as well as technical and administrative support to the broadcasting networks.
USAGM, Senior Advisor Kari Lake cancels obscenely expensive 15-year-lease that burdened the taxpayers and enforces Trump’s Executive Order to drastically downsize agency | USAGM
Ted Lipien, one of the co-founders of USAGM Watch (previously BBG Watch), former VOA acting associate director, and former RFE/RL President and CEO, said in a “1A” program on NPR, “Voice of America goes silent,” that he agrees with the need to drastically reform and reorganize the U.S. government-funded media entities, but stressed that the sudden termination of programs “makes reforming these media outlets nearly impossible” and called for the decision to be reversed, while also continuing to break up the agency’s dysfunctional and corrupt bureaucracy. In a recent op-ed in The Hill, he urged members of Congress from both parties to intervene with President Trump and get the journalists back to work on producing programs vital to U.S. national security and the defense of human rights abroad.
As I wrote in my op-ed in The Hill, President Trump’s decision to shut down the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and other media entities in the U.S. Agency for Global Media was sudden, harmful, and deeply unfair. It placed journalists in foreign language services who have devoted years of their lives to their jobs and have done nothing wrong in an impossible position. Most of the biased partisan reporting and other violations of the VOA Charter occurred in the VOA English-language newsroom, but that is not the core of VOA or USAGM operations. To be sure, all of the USAGM agencies have suffered from terrible management decisions in recent years. But to break things by stopping all programming does not make these agencies better. Rather, it weakens or will eliminate their usefulness to U.S. national security. This latest move by the White House makes reforming these media outlets nearly impossible. – Ted Lipien on NPR’s “1A” program, March 18, 2025
Voice of America goes silent | “1A” NPR
Guests: David Folkenflik, NPR; Jeff Trimble board chair, EurasiaNet; former deputy director, USAGM, former president, RadioFree Liberty/Radio Free Europe; Steve Herman, chief national correspondent, Voice of America
