Judge halts shutdown of Voice of America
The judge is ordering the Trump administration to immediately restore all employees and contractors to their news programs.
By Kyle Cheney
04/22/2025 03:57 PM EDT
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore Voice of America, saying the effort to gut the 80-year-old government-funded news service likely violated the law and Constitution.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the administration’s rush to dismantle the VOA and related news organizations funded by the U.S. Agency for Global Media resulted in the suspension of hundreds of journalists and employees. It put some overseas correspondents at risk of being deported to their home countries, the judge noted. And Lamberth said the silencing of VOA — for the first time in 80 years — also deprived hundreds of millions of listeners of a reliable source of news in parts of the world that lack a free press.
Lamberth said the administration offered virtually no justification for the draconian cuts, suggesting it was working to comply with President Donald Trump’s March 14 executive order requiring a significant scaling back of the agency. Yet the cuts were so bone-deep, Lamberth said, that they likely violated even Trump’s command that the programs continue to operate at legally required minimum levels of service.
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https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/22/voice-of-america-donald-trump-00303983
