A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from dismantling Voice of America, a government-funded news organization that President Trump has accused of being biased against him, and mandated that its journalists be allowed to resume their work.
The judge, Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also ordered the administration to halt its effort to shut down two other federally funded outlets, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
The judge’s carefully worded decision appeared aimed at closing loopholes in previous court rulings that allowed Trump officials to keep the Voice of America newsroom shuttered and its programming on hold. Voice of America, founded in 1942, had operated without interruption until March 15, when Mr. Trump signed an executive order seeking to gut its parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Judge Lamberth is overseeing multiple court challenges to Mr. Trump’s order brought by Voice of America journalists and organizations that promote press freedoms.
The Trump administration is “likely in direct violation of numerous federal laws,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
Nearly all of Voice of America’s staff members were placed on paid leave after the March 15 executive order, abruptly halting news programming in 49 languages that more than 425 million listeners across the world tuned into every week.
Kari Lake, a close ally of Mr. Trump whom he hired as special adviser to the media agency, also shut down its radio transmitters, dismissed vendors and terminated wire services and other contracts.
The executive order gutting the U.S. Agency for Global Media appeared to test the bounds of Mr. Trump’s authority, as Congress established it as an independent agency and moved in 2020 to limit the power of its presidentially appointed leadership.
Judge Lamberth, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, wrote in his ruling that in attempting to throttle the outlets in part by cutting funding and removing staff, the Trump administration had likely violated the Constitution, along with laws that govern how federal funds are spent. He also cited the International Broadcasting Act, which mandates continued operations of the media networks.
“The president does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend the funds,” Judge Lamberth wrote. “The defendants’ unwillingness to expend funds in accordance with the congressional appropriations laws is a direct affront to the power of the legislative branch.”
He added: “Congress possesses the ‘power of the purse.’”
The Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Asia, which the Trump administration has sought to defund despite a court order that forbade the termination of news media grants, are also overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Those newsrooms have not received their congressionally approved funding for April and are on the brink of a total shutdown. Unlike Voice of America, which is a government entity, those news outlets are private nonprofits and have independent hiring authorities, but they have had to furlough their staff in recent weeks.
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Minho Kim covers breaking news and climate change for The Times. He is based in Washington.
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