‘Dismantling by decree’: VOA journalists sue Trump, Kari Lake for slashing funding to worldwide news network

Left: Kari Lake speaking during the second day of the Republican National Convention, Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Right: President Donald Trump at a press conference at the White House in Washington on February 27, 2025 (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA; via AP Images).

A group of journalists has sued the Trump administration over its efforts to shut down the Voice of America news network and other federally-funded global media organizations.

The lawsuit, filed Friday, names Kari Lake – the stalwart Arizona political candidate, election denier, and Donald Trump ally — along with the agency she oversees, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which houses VOA, among the defendants. The plaintiffs allege that the administration’s massive cuts to the agency, which threaten thousands of jobs, violate their First Amendment free speech rights as well as the separation of powers, by taking a chain saw to an agency approved by Congress.

The VOA network — which is not broadcast within the U.S., but is heard by more than 350 million people worldwide each week — has long been on the president’s list of agencies to be targeted. In his March 15, 2025, executive order, Trump refers to the organization as “the voice of radical America” and asserts that under his watch, “taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

The order then goes on to cite multiple right-wing media organizations, including the Daily Caller and The Washington Free Beacon, as proof of VOA’s alleged “radical” agenda.

The plaintiffs in the case include Patsy Widakuswara, previously VOA’s White House bureau chief, and Jessica Jerreat, its press freedom editor. Four other journalists sued anonymously.

The lawsuit says this move is nothing short of historic — and devastating.

“Prior to March 15, 2025, Congress’s statutory mandate that VOA continuously broadcast to the world had been honored and faithfully upheld for more than eight decades,” the lawsuit says. “Today, for the first time in VOA’s history, it is defied.”

The lawsuit lays out the stakes in stark terms:

If VOA and the other USAGM networks are to survive, this Court must act. It must recognize and protect, as the court did in Turner v. U.S. Agency for Global Media, the rights of journalists and those who assist them to work and produce content free from partisan interference by the Executive Branch — including the “interference” inherent in being locked out of their offices, computer networks, email accounts, and broadcast studios, and living under the threat of termination. It must enforce the firewall in the way Congress wrote it. And it must uphold the foundational principles of Congressional authority, appropriations, and separation of powers that are set forth in the Constitution and laws of the United States, and which prevent the Executive Branch from dismantling by decree an agency created and mandated by Congress, as a court recognized earlier this week when it blocked a similar shuttering of USAID.

According to the lawsuit, the move to gut the government-funded networks is unlawful content-based restriction barred by the First Amendment.

“Defendants have shuttered USAGM’s networks’ operations because of the content and perceived viewpoint of the networks’ speech, unlawfully interfered with the editorial independence of the networks’ journalists, and seek to chill the future speech of the networks’ journalists,” the complaint says.

The complaint also accuses Lake and the administration of unlawfully violating the “statutory firewall” that is intended to maintain the independence of VOA — and of going after individual journalists and possibly endangering their lives.

“As officers of USAGM and its associated entities, Defendants are bound by the statutory firewall,” the complaint says. “Defendants have egregiously, aggressively, and unabashedly violated the firewall by interfering with and indeed preventing VOA’s newsgathering and news dissemination. Defendants have caused the killing of valuable news stories and ‘disappeared’ editorials—and Defendants have also directly risked Plaintiffs’ livelihoods and future careers, smearing them as incompetent or, worse, as ‘spies” and “terrorist sympathizers.””

Describing “government-funded journalism” as having long been a “central component of the United States’ effort to combat disinformation and propaganda abroad,” the complaint says that VOA plays a key role in maintaining American interests around the globe.

“Today, some of American broadcasting’s biggest audiences are in North Korea, Iran, and China, where millions of people seek credible, impartial news uninfluenced by government agenda or politics,” the complaint says. “American government-funded broadcasting services have played key roles in foreign policy by providing truthful information about local and world repressive regimes that otherwise suppress or censor the press. The global public’s trust in the accuracy of reporting from these organizations is paramount to the success of their mission.”

Congress, the complaint continues, has recognized the independence of these journalists, despite being on the government payroll.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction reinstating all employees, contractors, and grantees to their jobs at USAGM, and an order that the Trump administration “take no further action to reduce USAGM’s workforce (whether employees, contractors, or grantees).” In addition, the plaintiffs seek an order that the defendants “comply with Congressional statutes that require VOA to ‘serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news,’ and require international USAGM outlets to “provide news which is consistently reliable and authoritative, accurate, objective, and comprehensive[.]’”

In addition, the plaintiffs are asking the court to “[d]eclare that Defendants violated the First Amendment and statutory firewall, separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the appointments clause,” and to order the defendants to “cease their violations of Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights.”

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‘Dismantling by decree’: VOA journalists sue Trump, Kari Lake for slashing funding to worldwide news network

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‘Dismantling by decree’: VOA journalists sue Trump, Kari Lake for slashing funding to worldwide news network

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