The Trump Administration’s push to scrap publicly-funded news outlets continued on Friday, with hundreds of Voice of America workers receiving layoff notices.
Friday’s layoffs, which hit more than 600 employees at Voice of America and its parent company, U.S. Agency for Global Media, comes just a month after 500 USAGM contractors lost their jobs. Voice of America’s staff will now drop to about 200 employees, or roughly 15% of its headcount at the start of the year.
Kari Lake, who the president picked to run VOA earlier this year, said the cuts were made to “effectuate President Trump’s agenda to shrink the out-of-control federal bureaucracy.” The cuts, she added, come after “American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that’s been riddled with dysfunction, bias, and waste.”
President Trump has also ripped the VOA — which was founded during World War II as a state-funded international broadcasting network — as a “disgusting” operation that says terrible things about the U.S.
The layoff notices come as President Trump has looked to stop tax dollars from going to public broadcasters like National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting System. Last week, House Republicans led by Speaker Mike Johnson voted to cancel $1.1 billion in funding for PBS and NPR over the next two years that had been previously approved by lawmakers.
In March, President Trump signed an executive order aiming to gut VOA and several other federal agencies. VOA employees were then placed on administrative leave and broadcasts were paused over the last few months, while the Trump Administration faced a lawsuit from several VOA employees who aimed to restore service.
“[Friday’s layoffs] spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” three VOA reporters who sued the to block the cuts told CNN in a joint statement.
Last week, VOA recalled about 100 workers for its Farsi, or Persian, news service, as the conflict between Israel and Iran broke out. While VOA’s Farsi website posted stories on Friday, some of those staffers who were recently called back to work received layoff notices.
