The Trump administration notified Congress this week of a plan that would eliminate nearly all of the remaining employees at Voice of America, a federally funded news network that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom.
The staff count at Voice of America would shrink from roughly 1,400 journalists and administrative staff to less than 20 as part of the proposed restructuring, according to a letter dated Tuesday and addressed to Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
About a third of those 1,400 workers have already been laid off, however, as the administration has moved rapidly to dismantle a media organization President Trump has attacked as “the voice of radical America.”
The letter, reviewed by The New York Times, was signed by Kari Lake, a key ally of President Trump and a senior adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America.
The proposed reorganization is in line with Mr. Trump’s orders to slash the size of the federal work force. But the president and his allies have also been harshly critical of the outlet’s coverage. He accused the outlet, which delivers news in countries with authoritarian governments such as Russia, China and Iran, of spreading “anti-American” and partisan “propaganda.”
The letter states that the latest round of firings would lead to “the deletion” of other news services provided by Voice of America, which broadcast in 49 languages to nearly 100 countries for more than 350 million listeners and readers until March.
Employees and advocates for press freedom had sued in response to the previous cuts that had taken the organization offline, and in April, a federal judge ordered officials to restore news programming at the agency as mandated by Congress. Ms. Lake suggested in the letter that her agency would be in compliance with both the judge’s order and the law by leaving a small number of Voice of America employees in place, a decision that she claimed would satisfy a “statutory minimum” for staffing.
By law, the executive branch is required to keep V.O.A. as “a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news” across the globe, “communicating directly with the peoples of the world.” But there is no minimum number of required employees.
A White House spokesman directed inquiries about the proposal to Ms. Lake, who emphasized that it had been approved by career agency employees. She disputed the notion that nearly all staff members would be terminated. Her letter notes that the proposal is subject to change.
As outlined in the letter, the plan would leave only 11 employees for Voice of America’s radio and television programs and two positions each for its services targeting Iran, China and Afghanistan. That would be less than 2 percent of its prior work force for the news agency that Congress gave around $260 million for the current fiscal year, according to court filings.
“You can’t make staff this size produce content for a global audience of 360 million,” Patsy Widakuswara, a Voice of America reporter who is leading a lawsuit against Ms. Lake and the media agency, said in a statement. “We are abdicating our voice and influence in the world.”
The news agency, founded in 1942 to combat Nazi propaganda, had operated without interruption until March 15, a day after Mr. Trump signed an executive order seeking to gut its parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
In March, Ms. Lake, an unsuccessful candidate for governor and Senate in Arizona who fueled Mr. Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, declared her own workplace “unsalvageable.” She also claimed that the U.S. Agency for Global Media and its newsrooms were rampant with “waste, fraud and abuse,” without providing evidence.
Minho Kim covers breaking news and climate change for The Times. He is based in Washington.
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