He’s done it again. Or rather, they have. As part of their curious slash-and-burn crusade to dismantle – for better or worse – large swathes of the American state from the top, President Donald Trump and his bestie-in-chief Elon Musk with his gang of enforcers at DOGE have put the axe to yet another seven government agencies. Carried out by presidential executive order, this particular blitz is aimed at offices busy with things as diverse as labor dispute mediation and the mitigation of homelessness.

The method of Trumpist attack is simple and already familiar: The targeted agencies are not literally shut down, which Trump cannot legally do by decree. Instead, their budgets and staff are pruned so aggressively that they have to cease operations.

Yet, tellingly, there is only one kind of cut that has really made centrists, liberals, and the mainstream media furious. Nope, not the hit on the homeless; and not the one on labor relations either. What caused a ruckus instead is that Trump and Musk have gone after state propaganda. To be precise, state propaganda for the rest of the world.

For one of the offices that has been given the Trumpist flamethrower treatment this time is the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). And that is, in reality, the US ministry for propaganda abroad.

While it’s a fairly new (2018) label, USAGM’s roots reach deep into the fetid soil of the last century’s Cold War.

Originally, there were Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty. Voice of America was founded during World War II and was quickly retooled afterwards to be used as a Cold War propaganda weapon by the CIA. Its younger cousins, Radio........

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