A federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Thursday from firing the director of Voice of America, a federally funded news network that provided independent reporting in countries with limited press freedom.
The judge, Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled that Trump officials cannot remove the director, Mike Abramowitz, without approval from the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, a bipartisan board designed to check political influence on federally funded newsrooms.
“The applicable statutory requirements could not be clearer: the director of Voice of America ‘may only be removed if such action has been approved by a majority vote’” of the board, Judge Lamberth wrote. He added: “There is no longer a question of whether the termination was unlawful.”
The ruling is a setback to President Trump and Kari Lake, a fierce Trump ally who has led efforts to close federally funded news networks, including Voice of America, which the White House has accused of left-wing bias and spreading “radical” and “anti-Trump” propaganda.
Mr. Abramowitz said in a statement that it was critical for the government to continue U.S.-supported news broadcasting to countries with authoritarian governments that suppress independent journalism and spread anti-American rhetoric.
He said he was gratified that Judge Lamberth found that Trump officials “must follow the law as Congress mandated,” and added that Voice of America’s programming “is so important for the security and influence of the United States.”
The administration’s lawyers had argued to Judge Lamberth that the law limiting the president’s authority to fire Mr. Abramowitz was an unconstitutional check on executive power. They also claimed that the court lacked jurisdiction, as Congress established the Merit Systems Protection Board for federal employment disputes. (Mr. Trump has also moved to fire members of the M.S.P.B.)
Ms. Lake said the administration planned to appeal the ruling, calling it “absurd.”
“Elections have consequences, and President Trump runs the executive branch,” she said in an email. “I have confidence that the Constitution will eventually be enforced.”
Trump officials had moved to fire Mr. Abramowitz on Aug. 1 after he refused to accept reassignment as a “chief management officer” of a Voice of America radio station in North Carolina that the network had used to provide shortwave radio broadcasts to Latin America and West Africa.
Voice of America had stopped broadcasting to those regions in March after Mr. Trump put nearly all of the organization’s employees on paid leave. In June, the administration had tried — and failed — to lay off nearly all 1,300 of Voice of America’s reporters and support staff.
The network now broadcasts in only four languages — Persian, Mandarin and two main languages in Afghanistan, Dari and Pashto. Before, it aired news programs in 49 languages to 360 million people every week, including in Russia, China and Iran.
V.O.A.’s programming remains drastically curtailed despite an April order from Judge Lamberth that the administration restore the network to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”
It is unlikely that the administration could quickly get consent from the advisory board to fire Mr. Abramowitz. A few days after his inauguration, President Trump fired six of the seven board members, leaving only Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who automatically serves because he heads the State Department. At least four members, excluding Mr. Rubio, are required for the board to vote. The six members besides Mr. Rubio must be confirmed by the Senate, and none has been replaced.
“The defendants do not even feign that their efforts to remove Abramowitz comply with that statutory requirement,” Judge Lamberth wrote on Thursday. “How could they, when the board has been without a quorum since January?”
Congress established the advisory board in 2020 after President Trump’s appointee to lead Voice of America’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was accused of trying to turn federally funded news agencies into a mouthpiece for the administration by firing the leadership of the newsrooms.
A federal investigation later found that the appointee, Michael Pack, had grossly mismanaged the Agency for Global Media by sidelining executives he felt did not sufficiently support Mr. Trump.
Minho Kim covers breaking news and climate change for The Times. He is based in Washington.
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