Kari Lake makes it official: Hundreds of Voice of America employees given pink slips

In its latest attack on Voice of America, the Trump administration sent out layoff notices to hundreds of the government-funded news network’s employees, making official what had long been expected after all contractors were fired last month.

This latest move, which eliminates 639 full-time staffers from VOA and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the network’s parent bureau, comes just days after USAGM Senior Adviser Kari Lake called back dozens of employees for the network’s Persian-language service amid Israel’s conflict with Iran.

A significant portion of the VOA Farsi staff recently brought back to work are included in Lake’s reduction-in-force order, two sources familiar with the matter told The Independent.

Since mid-March, the vast majority of VOA employees have been on paid administrative leave following President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for USAGM and the state-run media outlets it oversees to be gutted of all “non-statutory components and functions.” At the time, Trump called VOA “the voice of radical America” and accused it of peddling “anti-American” and liberal propaganda.

Lawsuits brought by VOA staffers and executives have sought to stop the administration’s efforts to effectively dismantle the network, claiming that the president didn’t have the constitutional authority. While a federal judge issued an injunction in April that would have allowed VOA employees to return to work, an appellate court stayed most of that ruling, leaving the majority of the staff in limbo.

In recent weeks, Lake brought back a skeleton crew to keep Voice of America staffed at a “statutory minimum,” a move that left those employees “angry most of the time” as the “amount of programming that’s being produced is not a credible replacement for what was on air before.” Additionally, Lake cut a deal with MAGA cable news channel One America News to become a content provider for VOA down the road.

Earlier this month, Lake – a former local TV anchor and twice-failed Arizona political candidate – sent Congress a letter detailing her reduction-in-force plan to eliminate most of the 800 full-time jobs at VOA. This came after she had terminated roughly 500 contract employees. Based on the proposal to Congress, Voice of America would be reduced to just 18 employees and 81 staffers across USAGM.

Still, just last week, Lake frantically recalled roughly 75 employees to staff up Voice of America’s Farsi news division, as well as the network’s Pashto and Dari services, following Israel’s missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Those divisions had previously been stripped down to just a handful of journalists in an effort to demonstrate to the federal courts that the administration was fulfilling its statutory mandate. “History is being made, and VOA Persian news service is rising to the occasion to cover it,” Lake boasted to Fox News.

On Friday, however, the vast majority of Voice of America employees received a “special notice of reduction in force” letter from Lake. The Trump aide then followed that up by releasing a letter announcing that the USAGM had “completed a significant workforce reduction” that eliminated 85 percent of the agency’s personnel.

“Today, we took decisive action to effectuate President Trump’s agenda to shrink the out-of-control federal bureaucracy,” Lake wrote in the letter. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America – part of a long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”

She added: “American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that's been riddled with dysfunction, bias, and waste. That ends now.”

The layoffs will leave USAGM with roughly 200 employees, and the terminations will take effect on September 1. In her announcement, Lake noted that employees who had been placed on paid leave in March had been given opportunities to take the “Fork in the Road” offer – which would pay staffers through the end of September if they resigned.

Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House Bureau Chief who is suing the administration alongside VOA Press Freedom Editor Jessica Jerreat and USAGM Director of Strategy and Performance Assessment Kate Neeper, is calling on Congress to intervene.

“USAGM has launched its mass layoff of VOA and USAGM staff, including some of our Persian colleagues they called back to work just last week to cover Israel’s war with Iran. Their last day on the payroll will be Sept 1, Labor Day,” she said in a statement to The Independent.

“This move follows USAGM’s firing of more than 500 contractors last month. It spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds U.S. ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” Widakuswara continued.

Expressing concern that authoritarian regimes are “flooding the global information space with anti-American propaganda” now that Voice of America is silenced, she urged Congress “to continue its long tradition of bipartisan support for VOA” amid the ongoing lawsuit.

Meanwhile, all three plaintiffs in the lawsuit confirmed that they have now received reduction-in-force notices from Lake.