Most Staffers At VOA Are Jobless

After months of legal battles, VOA was officially reduced Friday to a fraction of its pre-Trump form.Kari Lake, a Trump appointee and senior adviser to USAGM, oversaw widespread layoffs, with approximately 600 contractors terminated in May and plans to cut the remaining workforce from about 1,400 to roughly 81 employees by mid-August.

This included minimal staffing for key services, such as two people each for Afghanistan, China, and Iran language services, and 11 for VOA itself. Lake described the agency as “unsalvageable” and announced a controversial plan to integrate content from One America News Network (OANN), a far-right, pro-Trump outlet, prompting criticism for undermining VOA’s mandate for objective journalism.

Legal challenges temporarily stalled the dismantling. In April, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to restore VOA operations, citing violations of congressional mandates and press freedom. However, an appeals court later paused this ruling, allowing layoffs to proceed. Critics, including VOA journalists and press freedom advocates, warned that the cuts would create an “empty space” in global media, enabling propaganda from adversaries like Russia and China to dominate. The reduced VOA, operating with a skeleton crew, struggles to fulfill its mission of providing accurate, objective news to its global audience of over 350 million.

The Voice of America (VOA), a U.S. government-funded international news broadcaster established in 1942 to counter propaganda and promote independent journalism, was significantly reduced in size and scope following actions by the Trump administration in 2025. 

On March 14, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), VOA’s parent organization, accusing it of being “anti-Trump” and spreading “radical propaganda.” 

The order directed USAGM to reduce operations to the “minimum presence and function required by law,” placing over 1,300 VOA employees on administrative leave and terminating funding for related networks like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.