In a dramatic turn for U.S. international broadcasting, a federal judge in Washington has blocked the Trump administration from firing Michael Abramowitz, the director of Voice of America (VOA), after months of escalating political maneuvering and legal battles over the future of the storied government-funded news agency. The ruling, handed down on Thursday, August 28, 2025, by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, comes amid sweeping efforts by the White House and senior officials to reshape or even shutter VOA and its parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
Judge Lamberth’s decision is the latest chapter in a saga that has seen the Trump administration attempt to dramatically curtail VOA’s operations and remove its leadership—moves that have alarmed press freedom advocates and fueled concerns about political interference in U.S.-funded journalism. According to The Washington Post, the judge ruled that President Trump and his allies cannot remove Abramowitz without the approval of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, a bipartisan oversight body established by Congress to prevent exactly this kind of executive overreach.
“The applicable statutory requirements could not be clearer: the director of Voice of America ‘may only be removed if such action has been approved by a majority vote’ of the board,” Judge Lamberth wrote in his opinion, as reported by The New York Times. He added pointedly, “There is no longer a question of whether the termination was unlawful.” The ruling is a clear rebuke to the administration’s argument that the law limiting the president’s authority to fire VOA’s director is an unconstitutional check on executive power.
At the heart of the dispute is the fate of Michael Abramowitz, a former Washington Post reporter who has served as VOA’s director since 2024. The administration first moved to oust him on August 1, 2025, after he refused a reassignment to manage a VOA radio station in North Carolina—a facility that had previously broadcast to Latin America and West Africa but had ceased operations in March after nearly all employees were placed on paid leave by executive order. In the letter notifying Abramowitz of his removal, John A. Zadrozny, a senior adviser at USAGM, cited his refusal to accept the reassignment as grounds for termination.
The attempted firing was just one episode in a broader campaign to downsize and restructure VOA and its parent agency. In March 2025, Abramowitz and over 1,000 USAGM employees were placed on administrative leave after President Trump issued an executive order to reduce the agency to its “minimum presence and function required by law,” according to The Washington Post. In the following months, Kari Lake—a prominent Trump ally who was tapped to lead USAGM—fired 500 contractors in May and tried to lay off more than 600 full-time staffers in June, though those layoffs have been delayed due to administrative complications. Lake also placed acting CEO Victor Morales on administrative leave in July, further consolidating her control over the agency.
These moves have had a dramatic effect on VOA’s output. Once a global powerhouse broadcasting in 49 languages to an audience of 360 million people each week, VOA now airs programs in just four languages: Persian, Mandarin, and Afghanistan’s two main tongues, Dari and Pashto. The drastic reduction in coverage, particularly to countries where press freedom is limited and independent journalism is often suppressed, has raised alarms among foreign policy experts and democracy advocates. Abramowitz himself has argued that VOA’s programming is “so important for the security and influence of the United States.”
In April 2025, Judge Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction ordering the administration to restore VOA’s operations and ensure the network “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” But, as reported by The New York Times, the administration’s compliance has been partial at best. Plaintiffs from VOA, including Abramowitz and a group of journalists led by former White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, recently asked the court to hold the government in contempt for failing to fully follow the injunction. Judge Lamberth, while stopping short of contempt, warned that Kari Lake was “verging on contempt” and ordered her to be deposed in the coming weeks, along with two other USAGM officials.
Lake, who ran unsuccessful campaigns for Arizona governor in 2022 and U.S. Senate in 2024 before being appointed by Trump to USAGM, has not been shy in expressing her frustration with the legal process. In a recent radio interview cited by The Washington Post, she complained, “Of course I’ve got a judge here in Washington, D.C.—I’ve got five cases against me as I try to scale this monster, this beast back and rightsize it. I mean, I’ve got a judge who’s threatening me with contempt of court, throwing me in prison, if I don’t produce more of the propaganda that he wants me to produce.” Lake has also announced plans for a mass reduction-in-force that could see more than 500 agency employees—most of whom have been on paid administrative leave since March—terminated in the coming days.
Behind the legal wrangling lies a deeper struggle over the independence of U.S. government-funded media. Congress established the International Broadcasting Advisory Board in 2020 after Trump’s appointee to lead USAGM, Michael Pack, was accused of trying to turn the agency’s newsrooms into administration mouthpieces. The board was intended as a safeguard, requiring a majority vote to remove VOA’s director. Yet, in January 2025, President Trump fired six of the board’s seven members, leaving only Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who serves ex officio. With no quorum—at least four Senate-confirmed members are needed—the board has been unable to act, effectively blocking the administration’s efforts to legally remove Abramowitz.
Judge Lamberth’s ruling leaves the administration with few immediate options. As he noted in his decision, “The defendants do not even feign that their efforts to remove Abramowitz comply with that statutory requirement. How could they, when the board has been without a quorum since January?” In response, Kari Lake has called the ruling “absurd” and vowed to appeal, arguing, “Elections have consequences, and President Trump runs the executive branch. I have confidence that the Constitution will eventually be enforced.”
The administration’s lawyers maintain that the law limiting the president’s authority to fire the VOA director is an unconstitutional check on executive power and have argued that the court lacks jurisdiction, as Congress established the Merit Systems Protection Board for federal employment disputes. Notably, President Trump has also moved to fire members of the Merit Systems Protection Board.
For now, the fate of VOA—and the future of U.S. government-funded journalism overseas—remains in limbo. With programming drastically curtailed and hundreds of journalists still on leave, the network’s ability to provide independent news to audiences in authoritarian countries is in jeopardy. As the legal battle continues, the world watches to see whether the firewall between politics and journalism at America’s international broadcasters will hold.
