Judge reverses Trump staff reductions at Voice of Americahttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/judge-reverses-trump-staff-reductions-at-voice-of-america/ar-AA1YV8D6?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=a4594b35c4694cbd879c67b37dc0356d&ei=51 🔗 [Link: msn.com/en-us/news/us/judge-reverses-trump-staff-reductions-at-voice-of-america/ar-AA1YV8D6/]Marc Ramirez (18 March 2026)
Hundreds of Voice of America staffers who've spent the last year on leave will be headed back to work after a judge's ruling ordering the Trump administration to revive the dismantled federal broadcasting operation.
More than 1,000 Voice of America journalists, technicians, budget analysts, electronics engineers and other workers had been placed on administrative leave last year by Kari Lake, the former news anchor who President Donald Trump appointed to hollow out the international news entity as part of efforts to streamline government operations.
But the March 17 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth of the District of Columbia means the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs the Voice of America, will have until next week to produce a plan to get Voice of America up and running again. The decision follows a March 7 ruling by Lamberth that Lake had been improperly installed as the agency's CEO and thus was without authority to carry out its dismantling.
"Defendants have provided nothing approaching a principled basis for their decision," Lamberth said in his ruling.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media was among seven federal agencies cited for reduction by Trump in an executive order signed last year as part of his efforts to make government more efficient, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt describing Voice of America as "anti-American propaganda."
