Judge orders Trump administration to restore Voice of America and bring back hundreds of staff

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to restore the Voice of America’s operations after large parts of the government-run broadcaster had effectively been shut down a year ago, putting hundreds of employees who have been on administrative leave back to work. 

U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth gave the U.S. Agency for Global Media a week to put together a plan for putting Voice of America on the air. It has been operating with a skeleton staff since President Trump issued an executive order to shut it down.

A week ago, Lamberth said Kari Lake, who had been Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the agency, did not have the legal authority to do what she had done at VOA because she lacked Senate confirmation. In Tuesday’s decision, Lamberth ruled on the actions she had taken to respond to Mr. Trump’s order. 

The judge reversed the administration’s decision to essentially sideline 1,042 of VOA’s 1,147 employees and shrink its operations to the “statutory minimum” required by Congress — moves that forced VOA to severely curtail its programming.

Lamberth called the moves “arbitrary and capricious,” and said the government didn’t take into account federal laws that lay out what languages and regions VOA must serve.  

“Defendants have provided nothing approaching a principled basis for their decision,” Lamberth wrote.

CBS News has reached out to USAGM and VOA for comment. 

Lake had denounced Lamberth’s March 7 ruling, saying it would be appealed. Since then, Mr. Trump nominated Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to run USAGM. That requires Senate approval, a step that was not taken with Lake.

Patsy Widakuswara, Voice of America’s White House bureau chief and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to restore it, said she is deeply grateful for the decision.

“We are eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has inflicted on our agency and our colleagues, to return to our congressional mandate, and to rebuild the trust of the global audience we have been unable to serve for the past year,” she told The Associated Press.

“We know the road to restoring VOA’s operations and reputation will be long and difficult,” she said. “We hope the American people will continue to support our mission to produce journalism, not propaganda.”

Voice of America has transmitted news coverage to countries around the world since its formation in World War II, often in countries with no tradition of a free press. Before Mr. Trump’s executive order, VOA had operated in 49 different languages, broadcasting to 362 million people.