Voice of America Cuts Paused by US Judge in Blistering Order

Plans to cut a majority of roles at Voice of America were paused by a federal judge, who blasted US Agency for Global Media leaders in an order for their “disrespect” to the court.

Following depositions of acting CEO Kari Lake and other agency heads, “the Court no longer harbors any doubt that defendants lack a plan to comply with the preliminary injunction, and instead have been running out the clock on the fiscal year while remaining in violation of even the most meager reading of USAGM and Voice of America’s statutory obligations,” Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in a Monday order.

Lamberth, of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, held back from initiating contempt proceedings—saying his court wouldn’t raise them on its own motion—but said that “should not be mistaken for lenience toward the defendants’ erstwhile egregious conduct.”

His order suspended plans for reductions in force that would impact 500 VOA employees, which were set to take effect Tuesday. The case stems from a March executive order calling for the US Agency for Global Media’s “non-statutory components and functions” to be eliminated. Nearly all of its employees were then put on administrative leave.

It’s unlikely with such a reduced staff that the agency would be able to continue fulfilling its statutory mission to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news,” as required by an April preliminary injunction, Lamberth said. Litigation over compliance with that prong of the injunction is still pending.

In depositions, “the defendants thumb their noses at Congress’s commands and give responses that are dripping with indifference to their statutory obligations,” he wrote. For example, Lake said she hadn’t thought much about whether Africa is a “significant region of the world” for news coverage, he noted.

He noted also that defense counsel gave the impression at an August hearing that no decision had been made on a RIF—and then, hours later, initiated one. It “strains credulity” that the plan was as uncertain as the defendants represented, Lamberth wrote.

Emergency Docket

Lamberth also gestured toward the US Supreme Court’s emergency docket orders, made in pending cases before final judgment with little accompanying rationale.

He declined to give weight to emergency orders that greenlit Trump administration RIFs in other cases.

“The Court, of course, accords the utmost respect to the Supreme Court’s stay-posture rulings,” Lamberth said. “Yet any appellate decision cannot provide precedential guidance without a statement of reasons from which the Court can analogize to the present facts.”

Inferring a “blanket rule” in support of similar RIFs “would, in effect, countenance letting the government fill in the blanks of the Supreme Court’s emergency rulings, relinquishing the “basic judicial task” of deciding what the law is, Lamberth said.

The cases are Widakuswara v. Lake, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01015-RCL, 9/29/25 and Abramowitz v. Lake, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00887-RCL, 9/29/25.