NEW YORK (AP) — The Voice of America can’t be silenced just yet.
A federal judge on Friday halted the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the eight-decade-old U.S. government-funded international news service, calling the move a “classic case of arbitrary and capricious decision making.”
Judge James Paul Oetken blocked the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America, from firing more than 1,200 journalists, engineers and other staff that it sidelined two weeks ago in the wake of President Donald Trump ordering its funding slashed.
Oetken issued a temporary restraining order barring the agency from “any further attempt to terminate, reduce-in-force, place on leave, or furlough” employees or contractors, and from closing any offices or requiring overseas employees to return to the U.S.
The order also bars the Agency for Global Media from terminating grant funding for its other broadcast outlets, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Afghanistan. The agency said Thursday it was restoring Radio Free Europe’s funding after a judge in Washington, D.C. ordered it to do so.
“This is a decisive victory for press freedom and the First Amendment, and a sharp rebuke” to the Trump administration’s “utter disregard for the principles that define our democracy,” said the plaintiffs’ lawyer Andrew G. Celli Jr.
At a hearing Friday in Manhattan, Oetken faulted the Trump administration for “taking a sledgehammer to an agency that has been statutorily authorized and funded by Congress.”
The judge criticized the agency’s leadership, including special adviser Kari Lake, for pulling the plug “seemingly overnight” on the U.S. government’s global, soft-power megaphone with “no consideration of the effects.”
