Hundreds of employees at Voice of America—the majority of the news organization's staff—were told Friday that they're losing their jobs, the Trump administration announced. Termination notices were being sent to 639 people, said Kari Lake, a senior presidential adviser, per the Hill. "Today, we took decisive action to effectuate President Trump's agenda to shrink the out-of-control federal bureaucracy," senior presidential adviser Kari Lake said in a statement. The workers will be on paid leave until Labor Day. The cuts will leave fewer than 200 employees, per the Guardian, about one-seventh of the total at the beginning of the year.
Among those laid off are employees of Voice of America's Persian-language service who were called back from administrative leave last week after Israel attacked Iran, per Politico. The group also includes people not old enough for mandatory retirement, who are being terminated without severance pay. That would violate the policy of US Agency for Global Media, the parent agency. The plaintiffs in the Voice of America lawsuit against the administration called on Congress "to continue its long tradition of bipartisan support for VOA," adding: "Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the global information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America's voice."
The Voice of America's mission since 1942 has been to provide accurate information in countries where the government runs the news media. President Trump ordered it shut, calling the federally funded organization "the voice of radical America" that spreads "anti-American" and partisan "propaganda," per the New York Times. Lake is scheduled to testify before a House committee on Wednesday about the cuts. (More Voice of America stories.)
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