Judge Says US Is Slow Walking Effort to Restore Voice of America

The Trump administration must provide more detailed information on its efforts to comply with an April court order requiring it to restore the operations of the Voice of America, a federal judge said Wednesday.

The government’s “descriptions of their activities are cryptic and even misleading,” and “troublingly, the crumbs of data provided suggest the defendants are ignoring several statutory mandates,” Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said in an order.

Lamberth has twice ordered the government to provide more information detailing its future plans for VOA staffing levels and operations to evaluate its compliance with his April preliminary injunction order. That order halted the administration from dismantling VOA under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March, after several VOA journalists and Director Michael Abramowitz challenged the shuttering of the organization.

But the government continues to “provide cagey answers and omit key information” and submit declarations with “flip-flopping” and contradictory representations regarding VOA’s operations, the judge said.

The administration’s July 18 filing said VOA has 72 full-time employees, but that it’s subject to change “as the Agency manages its operations.”

The filing “omits any reference” to the planned reduction in force of more than 600 VOA employees who have been on administrative leave since March, nor did the government explain “how, when, or why” its staffing numbers might change, the judge said.

“VOA’s staffing levels are inextricably enmeshed with its operational capacity and, in turn, its ability to carry out its statutory mandate, because VOA cannot operate without employees,” Lamberth wrote.

The judge also raised concerns about the administration’s representations and insufficient details of its spending of the $260 million Congress appropriated to VOA.

Although the government said roughly $137 million has been spent on regional broadcasting operations, “the Court cannot make sense” of that figure, “when nearly all of the regional broadcasting operations have been dark for months now.” And even if a large portion of the spending is going to the hundreds of employees on leave, Congress didn’t anticipate “that such a significant sum of taxpayer funds would be used to pay employees to sit at home for months on end, making no contribution to VOA’s statutory mandate,” the judge wrote.

“Without more explanation, the Court is left to conclude that the defendants are simply trying to run out the clock on the fiscal year, without putting the money Congress appropriated toward the purposes Congress intended,” Lamberth said.

The administration must provide information by Aug. 13 on how it’s restored VOA programming to meet its statutory obligations, and produce any documents related to its plans for the future of the US Agency for Global Media and its staffing levels.

Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, Ballard Spahr LLP, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, and others represent the plaintiffs.

The cases are Widakuswara v. Lake, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01015, 7/30/25 and Abramowitz v. Lake, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00887, 7/30/25.