More than a year after the Trump administration attempted to dismantle Voice of America, it is paying an estimated $1.6 million a week to keep 420 of its staffers on administrative leave, according to July numbers revealed in a State Department inspector general report published earlier this week.
The report paints perhaps the clearest picture yet of how much the Trump administration effort to shutter the government-funded news outlet has cost taxpayers — which, it said, did not conduct a detailed analysis of the impact or cost before making the cuts.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, slashed its workforce in March 2025, placing 994 of its 1,147 federal employees on leave, cutting 594 of its 602 contract workers and halting broadcasts, according to the agency’s count.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 ordering that USAGM be shrunk to the “minimum presence and function required by law.”
The effort was spearheaded by Kari Lake, a Republican former TV broadcaster from Arizona who became a Trump-aligned firebrand and ran unsuccessfully for Arizona governor and U.S. senator before joining the Trump administration. Lake called USAGM a “giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer” and canceled a building lease for the agency.
A federal judge later found that she had been illegally acting as the agency’s CEO and he struck down her mass layoff plan.
The Trump administration then nominated Sarah B. Rogers, a State Department official, to assume the role while maintaining her position as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. She is awaiting confirmation by the U.S. Senate, but told the U.S. Senate in her July confirmation hearing that she expects to hire and bring back some staff.
According to agency employees cited in the report, decisions on USAGM’s reorganization were made by personnel from the U.S. DOGE Service — the government cost-cutting initiative spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk — and USAGM’s political leadership, without the input of senior career officials at the agency.
USAGM did not respond to a request for comment.
“It has never made any sense for USAGM to pay people and not get the benefit of their talents and commitment to telling America’s story around the world,” said Michael Abramowitz, the VOA director who has been on administrative leave since March 2025 and who is suing the government to restore the broadcaster.
Still, he said he is “encouraged” that Rogers has said she wants to bring back VOA staff and that is happening “slowly.”
USAGM strategy director Kate Neeper and VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, plaintiffs in a separate employee lawsuit against the government, said that the harm is to taxpayers but also VOA’s audience.
“The report did not measure the deeper damage of losing the attention of 360 million people who trusted and relied on VOA every week,” they said. “Thousands of journalists built that trust over decades, and we fear it may be irreplaceable.”
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