Donald Trump is planning to kill Voice Of America and replace it with a MAGA propaganda machine.
The remaining 800 employees at the federally funded, award-winning newsroom are expecting to receive termination notices as soon as Wednesday, multiple unnamed sources told Politico. This would effectively shutter the agency, following the roughly 600 VOA employees who were fired earlier this month.
In March, it appeared that the Trump administration was attempting to interfere with the organization’s journalistic independence, suspending one of its top reporters for relaying others’ criticism of the president, and reassigning VOA’s veteran White House bureau chief to a different beat.
Later that month, Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the agency that oversees VOA, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, altogether, as part of a wider reduction in force throughout the federal government. The move sparked a lawsuit from journalists, federal workers, and their unions alleging that USAGM had not fulfilled its duty to protect the freedom of the press or maintain a separation of powers.
Further, by conducting a mass reduction in force, USAGM may have potentially violated its collective bargaining agreement with its employees. A representative for the American Federation of Government Employees, representing VOA employees, declined to comment to Politico.
Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte serving as a senior adviser to the USAGM, announced earlier this month that the agency was planning to partner with the pro-Trump One America News Network to provide its right-wing newsfeed to the outlets VOA oversees.
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