Voice of America Reporters Sue Kari Lake Over Agency Shuttering

Voice of America journalists sued politician and former TV news anchor Kari Lake Friday over the closure of the United States Agency for Global Media.

The USAGM doesn’t have authority to “shut itself down,” according to the complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, almost a week after 1,300 journalists and employees were forced to stop working.

The Trump administration was expressly motivated by its opposition “to the content of VOA’s journalistic output—in short: rank viewpoint discrimination,” the complaint said.

The administration is breaching the legally-mandated firewall between the government and federally-funded journalists, which defends their editorial independence, the complaint said.

The move is contrary to “Congress’s express statutory requirement that USAGM exist as an independent news agency to present a reliable and objective news source to the world,” the complaint said.

The plaintiff journalists include VOA’s former White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara and Press Freedom Editor Jessica Jerreat.

The VOA and other USAGM-funded networks had more than 425 million weekly listeners prior to the March 15 announcement. Now, VOA has zero listeners, and networks around the world that rely on USAGM funds are struggling to maintain their audiences, the complaint said.

“In many parts of the world a crucial source of objective news is gone, and only censored state-sponsored news media is left to fill the void,” the complaint said.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sued Lake on March 18 over USAGM withholding $7.5 million in funds from March 1-14. RFE also seeks $70 million in funding to cover the rest of the fiscal year.

The case is Widakuswara v. Lake, S.D.N.Y., No. 1:25-cv-02390, 3/21/25.