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Judge Slaps Down Trump-Lake VOA Shakeup, Orders 1,000+ Employees Reinstated

Kari Lake, President Donald Trump's initial choice to lead Voice of America.(Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.” Send an email to Fred.

A federal judge ordered more than 1,000 Voice of America employees removed from their jobs to be reinstated, in a blow to the Trump administration’s push to remake the entity and cut waste.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, of the District of Columbia, determined that the attempt to dismantle the taxpayer-funded media outlet was unlawful in an opinion Tuesday. 

Lamberth, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, issued the opinion in the combined cases of Abramowitz v. Lake and Widakuswara v. Lake.

President Donald Trump named Kari Lake, a broadcast journalist-turned-Republican political candidate in Arizona, to be the senior adviser to the acting CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media Victor Morales.

Trump initially appointed Lake to run the agency, but she was not confirmed by the Senate. In November, she took on the role of an adviser.

However, earlier this month, as part of the case, Lamberth also ruled that Lake’s earlier actions in firing the employees were not legitimate. 

“Although Lake’s role within USAGM at the time was ‘Senior Adviser to the CEO,’ she testified in this case that she had been delegated nearly all of the CEO’s statutory authority,” Lamberth wrote.

One of the lead plaintiffs, Michael Abramowitz, is the director of VOA who sued to keep his job. Patsy Widakuswara is a journalist employed by VOA. Both were joined by several co-plaintiffs suing over the removals. Both cases began in March 2025.

The job cuts came after Trump signed an executive order to eliminate non-mandatory functions across seven federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent agency of VOA. This came amid the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency moves.

“The Executive Order led the defendants to bring USAGM’s operations to a standstill,” Lamberth wrote. 

“USAGM and VOA collectively employed 1,147 full-time employees and had entered into service contracts with 598 contractors,” the opinion stated, adding that “VOA personnel accounted for more than 1,300 of the total number of employees and contractors at USAGM.”

The plaintiffs argued that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the separation of powers. 

“After clearing a series of threshold hurdles, the Court ultimately concludes that the plaintiffs prevail on all aspects of their APA claims except for certain contractors’ requests for reinstatement,” Lamberth wrote. 

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