President Trump’s nominee to oversee the parent agency of Voice of America, a government-funded news group that operates in countries with limited press freedoms, said on Thursday that if the Senate confirmed her, she would bring back many of the journalists who had been placed on paid leave since the early weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term.
The statement by the nominee, Sarah B. Rogers, during her confirmation hearing signaled a stark reversal of Mr. Trump’s earlier efforts to shutter Voice of America and other federally funded news groups. The turnaround came after lawmakers voiced for months a rare bipartisan opposition to the dramatic cuts to the newsrooms, which they believe are critical to counter misinformation and propaganda campaigns by American adversaries like Russia, China and Iran with factual reporting.
“I’m definitely going to bring back more of them,” Ms. Rogers said of the journalists while refraining from making exact commitments. “We do need to reform and modernize, but we should see people coming back to work.”
Kari Lake, a Trump ally who had been appointed as the leader of the parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, repeatedly tried to fire hundreds of journalists at Voice of America and cut funding to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other federally supported news groups last year. Ms. Lake’s efforts led to setbacks in federal courts that enjoined her directives and eventually declared that her appointment and actions as an acting chief executive were illegal and void.
Hundreds of journalists and support staff at Voice of America have been on paid leave since early 2025, when Mr. Trump signed an executive order that led to the closure of the news groups.
As recently as March, the government sought to overturn a Federal District Court order requiring the administration to bring back the V.O.A. workers it had put on leave. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the government, which argued that the courts lacked powers to order specific personnel decisions.
On Thursday, Ms. Rogers indicated that she might try a different approach, reinstating services to parts of Africa and investigating a possible return of V.O.A.’s Latin America service. She told the lawmakers that the parent organization, U.S. Agency for Global Media, would oversee a “careful, tactical resuscitation of resources” to parts of Africa, especially in the Sahel region, where Russia and China have engaged in heavy propaganda campaigns.
“I don’t want to make operational commitments,” she said. “But I strongly expect you’ll see more from us.”
Until March 2025, V.O.A. aired news programs in 49 languages to 360 million people every week. Voice of America now broadcasts in fewer than a dozen languages, including Persian, Mandarin and the two main languages in Afghanistan, Dari and Pashto.
Ms. Rogers, a staunch free-speech advocate who is also a top public diplomacy official at the State Department, received pointed questions on Thursday from lawmakers who raised concerns about her inflammatory style of communication, which has included disparaging remarks about immigrants.
If confirmed as the chief executive of the global media agency, Ms. Rogers would continue to serve in the State Department.
On Thursday, Ms. Rogers promised to stay clear of meddling with the editorial decisions of V.O.A. and other federally funded news organizations. She repeated that she would “commit to respect the professionalism and independence of international broadcasting.” The parent agency is currently overseen by an interim chief executive; Ms. Lake has been accused of trying to interfere with the news groups’ editorial independence during her tenure by making funding conditional on the hiring of executives aligned with the administration’s views.
In response to a question by Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, Ms. Rogers said the law did not allow her to unilaterally cut funding to government-funded news services critical of foreign leaders allied with Mr. Trump.
“If you’re asking, ‘Am I going to pull funding from a grantee if any reporters criticize anybody the president likes?’” she said, referring to news groups that receive federal dollars. “I don’t think that’s what the statute envisions, and I don’t think that’s what my priorities are going to be.”
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