A federal judge just put the brakes on Kari Lake’s aggressive shakeup of Voice of America. On Thursday, District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, ruled that Lake cannot fire VOA Director Michael Abramowitz without the approval of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board. That panel doesn’t even exist anymore after Donald Trump dissolved it back in January.
Earlier this month, Lake tried to push Abramowitz out after he refused to accept a reassignment to a transmitting station in North Carolina. He sued, arguing she didn’t have the authority to fire him without the board’s approval.
Abramowitz’s lawsuit also challenged Lake’s broader effort to tear apart the international broadcasting service, which is part of the U.S. government but operates independently. Conservatives have long blasted VOA as biased, with the Trump White House labeling it the “Voice of Radical America.”
Lake has been implementing Trump’s executive order to reduce the United States Agency for Global Media, VOA’s parent organization. Since March, when she was tapped as a senior White House adviser, she’s been dismantling the agency at a rapid pace.
VOA has been in operation since 1942 and broadcasts in nearly 50 languages to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. It has always been protected by a “firewall” meant to prevent government interference. Trump and his allies have ignored that tradition, accusing the outlet of pushing what they call “radical propaganda.” Among the examples they cite are a 2019 segment about transgender migrants and a 2020 video they claim boosted Joe Biden.
In June, Lake told lawmakers she believed “reform was not possible” at the USAGM. “This agency and its outlets are largely incompetent, corrupt, biased, and a threat to America’s national security and standing in the world,” she testified.
Since then, she has eliminated 1,400 jobs at the agency, including hundreds at VOA. The cuts were so sweeping that even some Republicans are worried. A Senate panel led by MAGA ally Lindsey Graham has launched an investigation into accusations that she misused federal funds.
Judge Lamberth has already criticized her approach. In July, he slammed the layoffs as a waste of taxpayer dollars. “When Congress appropriated $260 million to VOA for fiscal year 2025, it did not anticipate that such a significant sum of taxpayer funds would be used to pay employees to sit at home for months on end,” he wrote. “The legal term for that is ‘waste,’ and it is precisely what federal appropriation law aims to avoid.”
Lake, a former Fox anchor who lost two runs for Arizona governor, insists she’s acting within her legal authority. In a recent court filing, she said her cuts were “within the bounds of current and future federal law.”
Still, she’s made it clear she wants foreign-born VOA journalists gone. Speaking to Real America’s Voice, she said, “Their time here is up. And I said before, if I have to go to the airport with them, and accompany them to the airport and get them on the flight, I will do that.”
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