Federal Judge Blocks Trump Admin’s Effort to Silence Voice of America: ‘Direct Affront to the Power’ of Congress
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File
President Donald Trump racked up another “L” in court Tuesday after a federal judge ordered his administration to reinstate Voice of America and several other government-funded news services, restoring their funding and rehiring their staff.
Trump’s early actions in the first few months of his second term included sweeping cuts to a long list of aid and outreach programs, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is the parent of the global news service Voice of America (VOA). One of Trump’s executive orders on March 14 silenced USAGM programming and put many employees (including the entire VOA staff) on administrative leave, actions which the outlet’s journalists and other critics lambasted as a move that would “be celebrated by communists, autocrats and ayatollahs whose lies we shed light on.”
A group of litigants sued the Trump administration to block the effort to shutter VOA and other USAGM news services, citing the First Amendment, provisions in the Constitution that establish the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, the Constitution’s Take Care Clause, and several other federal statutory provisions including the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), International Broadcasting Act, and congressional appropriations acts.
At stake are the jobs for hundreds of employees and contractors and hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, as well as news sources that millions of listeners around the world have relied upon for eighty years. The VOA website’s last update was on March 15, 2025 and radio stations abroad that rely on its programming are either airing just music or have gone dark completely.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia explained his ruling in a 37-page memorandum opinion Tuesday afternoon, partially granting the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, blocking the Trump administration’s “actions to shutter the USAGM entities Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.”
Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reported on the ruling and noted that the “heart” of Lamberth’s opinion was finding that the draconian cuts to USAGM were “a direct affront to the power of the legislative branch.”
Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, highlighted how the Trump administration had put up almost no defense at all for the cuts, violating even the language of Trump’s order that the news programming continue broadcasting at the level required by law. The blunt force effort to shut down VOA and other USAGM entities was likely a Constitutional violation, the judge wrote, and showed the White House’s “unwillingness to expend funds in accordance with the congressional appropriations laws,” which “is a direct affront to the power of the legislative branch.”
“They took immediate and drastic action to slash USAGM, without considering its statutorily or constitutionally required functions as required by the plain language of [Trump’s executive order], and without regard to the harm inflicted on employees, contractors, journalists, and media consumers around the world,” Lamberth elaborated. “It is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary and capricious actions than the Defendants’ actions here.”
Lamberth’s order directed the Trump administration to reinstate all employees and contractors who were put on administrative leave or terminated, to unfreeze funds for several designated affiliate news services like Radio Free Asia, and to restart VOA programs in compliance with the service’s mandate under federal law to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”
The government’s arguments that its actions to shutter VOA were not targeting First Amendment-protected speech were met with skepticism by the judge, who pointed to comments by Trump and his allies claiming VOA was spreading “far-left” views.
“VOA has been operating under statutory mandate and with steady congressional appropriations for over eighty years, and in so doing, has cultivated an audience of 425 million listeners who rely on VOA’s output — particularly in areas of the world where a free press is otherwise unavailable,” wrote Lamberth. “The Networks have contributed to U.S. international broadcasting by almost exclusively relying on their yearly congressional appropriations, which have been uninterrupted for decades before March 15, 2025. There is no sign that the defendants considered these longstanding reliance interests before taking the sweeping actions at issue here.”
