Kari Lake lays off more than 500 staff at Voice of America parent agency

Kari Lake, the Trump administration official tasked with dismantling the Voice of America, sent termination notices to more than 500 employees at the broadcaster and its parent agency Friday night.

“The U.S. Agency for Global Media initiated what is known as a reduction in force, or RIF, of a large number of its full-time federal employees,” Lake wrote late on Friday, adding that this would “help reduce the federal bureaucracy … and save the American people more of their hard-earned money.”

The agency sent out notices late Friday night ahead of the Labor Day long weekend, with a termination date of Sept. 30, multiple recipients told The Washington Post.

Lake - the acting CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media - has faced legal challenges amid allegations that she is overstepping her statutory authority, and was blocked earlier this week from firing the director of Voice of America.

VOA was founded by the federal government in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, according to the outlet’s webpage, practicing a form of soft diplomacy by broadcasting stories about democracy in countries where press freedom is limited or nonexistent. Previously, the government-funded broadcaster and its affiliates reached 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week.

During his first term, President Donald Trump accused VOA of speaking “for America’s adversaries - not its citizens.” In March, the president issued an executive order aimed at chiseling the agency down to its “minimum presence and function required by law,” a move that led to more than 1,000 journalists being placed on indefinite administrative leave.

Lake, a Republican politician who ran unsuccessful races for Arizona governor in 2022 and U.S. Senate in 2024, went on to fire 500 contractors in May and attempt to fire more than 600 full-time staffers in June, a move that was rescinded soon after the federal employee union AFGE found the agency made numerous administrative errors.

VOA journalists have been challenging the moves in court since the March executive order, filing a lawsuit accusing officials of unlawfully shuttering the media outlet. In April, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction halting part of the executive order, but a federal appeals court overturned parts of Lamberth’s injunction, including a provision that ordered staffers back to work.

In a Saturday statement, VOA journalists Patsy Widakuswara and Jessica Jerreat, and Kate Neeper, a director at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, called Lake’s firings “abhorrent.”

“We are looking forward to her deposition to hear whether her plan to dismantle VOA was done with the rigorous review process that Congress requires,” Widakuswara, Jerreat and Neeper - all plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said. “So far we have not seen any evidence of that, and as such we will continue to fight for what we believe to be our rights under the law.”

On Thursday, Lamberth blocked Lake from firing VOA director Michael Abramowitz, saying she does not have the authority to do so without a majority vote from a Senate-confirmed advisory board that Trump previously dismantled. The judge also ordered Lake and two other officials deposed while threatening contempt of court if he doesn’t get sufficient answers for how the agency is cooperating with his order to follow its statutory mandates.