A federal judge has mandated that the Trump administration must allow over 1,000 sidelined “Voice of America” (VOA) personnel to return to their posts by next week.
This ruling on Tuesday came almost exactly one year after President Donald Trump initiated the dismantling of VOA and the rest of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
VOA, a widely respected, US-funded international broadcaster, has been largely silenced since then. Its website is frozen in time, showing no updates past March 15, 2025.
However, the court order dictates that VOA’s news reporting and programming must now be reinstated—a potentially crucial moment for American foreign policy, given the ongoing conflict in Iran.
In two separate decisions on Tuesday, Judge Royce C. Lambert asserted that Trump’s chosen management of VOA, including Kari Lake and other named defendants, was “unlawfully withholding agency action.”
He specified that the 1,042 VOA staffers who have been on paid administrative leave for the past year should be reinstated no later than March 23rd.
Furthermore, Lambert dismissed every action taken by Lake aimed at fulfilling Trump’s executive order to shrink USAGM to the “minimal presence and functions required by law.”
Tuesday’s decision followed a ruling ten days prior, in which Lambert already declared Lake’s operation of USAGM illegal for several months last year and invalidated mass firings that were occurring at that time.
Lake criticized Lambert and announced her intention to appeal the ruling. She offered no immediate response to the decisions issued Tuesday. A USAGM spokesperson did not immediately reply to CNN’s requests for comment.
Steve Herman, a VOA veteran who now directs a journalism center at the University of Mississippi, described these rulings as a “sweeping legal defeat for the MAGA minions” of Elon Musk—referring to Elon Musk—self-proclaimed “Deputy CEO” of USAGM Kari Lake and others in the Trump administration who sought to dismantle the “Voice of America.”
If the Trump administration complies with these orders, Herman suggested, “there will almost certainly be a fight over whether the editorial firewall that prohibits partisan distortion of VOA journalism will be upheld.”
Lake and her associates had been attempting to transform the remnants of VOA into an overtly pro-Trump messaging operation.
However, veterans of the US-funded international broadcaster maintain that the agency’s editorial independence and credibility are essential components of its success.
Tuesday’s court orders resulted from lawsuits filed by the sidelined VOA Director and three USAGM staffers.
The three employees—Patsy Vidacsek, Jessica Jerrelt, and Kate Naper—stated in a joint release that they are “eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has inflicted upon our agency and our colleagues, return to our congressional mandate, and regain the trust of the global audience we have been unable to serve over the past year.”
“We understand that the road to restoring VOA’s operations and reputation will be long and difficult,” the staffers remarked. “We hope the American people will continue to support our mission of producing journalism, not propaganda.”
Meanwhile, VOA Director Michael Abrams, whom Lake tried to fire last summer, told CNN: “We are thrilled by Judge Lambert’s decision and look forward to returning to work. Voice of America has never been more necessary.”
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