The website for Voice of America has been frozen in time since March 15, 2025. There is one mention of Iran on its homepage, though nothing about the US-Israeli strikes that sparked an escalating conflict that now involves 20 countries in Europe and the Middle East. It’s an eerie reminder of how Voice of America, an 84-year-old, federally funded news organization that broadcasts in 49 languages around the world, has been largely dormant since President Donald Trump sought to dismantle it last year.
But the website — and service — may get a second life after a federal judge ruled on Saturday that Kari Lake’s attempt to oversee Voice of America’s parent agency, the U.S Agency of Global Media, as acting CEO was invalid, thereby voiding all of her actions — including mass layoffs that gutted the once nearly 2,000-strong agency.
US District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth told the government agency to submit a memo by Wednesday at 5 p.m. naming an acting CEO and providing a clear plan for succession. While Lake has said she would appeal the ruling — and called the Reagan-appointed Lamberth “an activist judge” trying to stymie her efforts to slash government waste — the decision could pave the way for VOA’s legion of reporters to return to work after a year of paid administrative leave.
Such a move would mark a stunning reversal of Trump’s clampdown on U.S.-funded media, which already saw the dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the defunding of NPR and PBS. It also comes at a time when providing rigorous, fact-based news to audiences in countries like Iran would be a valuable service.
Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House Bureau Chief, whose lawsuit against Lake last year alongside two of her colleagues spurred the ruling, told TheWrap she’s more than ready to return. “If you ask me, I want to go tomorrow,” she said. “I wish I’d get an email today that says that, but we just don’t know.”
It’s also unclear what kind of newsroom Widakuswara and her colleagues would enter. Trump signed an executive order to gut Voice of America in March 2025, part of his broader efforts to reshape the federal government, and effectively hamstrung the organization, which is congressionally mandated to provide news for a global audience, largely in countries where press freedom is limited. Voice of America Director Michael Abramowitz has also sued to prevent the agency’s dismantling, and he told staff on Sunday he was hopeful Lamberth’s decision “will pave the way for all of us to return to work.”
Lake, who was appointed a “special adviser,” attempted to lay off virtually all of VOA’s full-time staffers, dismissed its contractors and set up a contract for programming from the far-right news channel One America News Network — though OANN programming hasn’t yet aired on Voice of America’s networks. Throughout, Trump never nominated Lake to be chief executive of USAGM, which requires Senate confirmation.
What was once a news organization that employed more than 1,000 journalists reaching more than 361 million people globally in 49 languages now boasts roughly 120 staffers and few reporting resources producing work in seven languages.
The drastic downsizing of VOA has made it especially challenging to cover historic developments in Iran and break through internet blackouts. While Lake has recalled some staffers, her decision to block USAGM’s Persian-language service, Radio Farda, from using the agency’s transmission equipment forced it to rely on commercial vendors. VOA has also faced controversy over not covering dissident Reza Pahlavi amid protests in Iran.
People who spoke to TheWrap said what will likely return is a leaner organization dedicated to producing objective journalism. One person familiar with the matter called the agency’s current state “a shell of a former self.”
“Our next fight, the next phase, is to ensure that we return to our global operations, and we make sure that we continue to produce journalism and not propaganda,” Widakuswara said. “I think that’s going to be the more difficult fight.”
A USAGM spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Rebuilding a news organization
The first task for returning employees would be a basic one: how to get VOA back on the air.
After Lake forced VOA and its sister networks, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, to go silent throughout much of the world, many of its contracts with radio and television affiliates were terminated, according to a person familiar with the matter. Lake in December said the agency would vacate its Washington, D.C. studios and move into the NASA building, which contains fewer studios for producing content.
The agency also ended its contracts with wire outlets, including the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse, though VOA did bring back Reuters’ reporting in recent days, Widakuswara said.
“The infrastructure, to a great degree, is gone, and it would take a significant amount of time to rebuild and restart to replace all that infrastructure,” said Steve Herman, a 20-year VOA veteran who now leads the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation.
The source familiar with the matter suggested a ramp-up could occur within a matter of months, but that would mean a more nimble operation of around 500 journalists and a potential consolidation of VOA and Radio Free Europe or Radio Free Asia. While Congress allocated $653 million in funds for the agency, it’s still down from the $867 million passed in prior years.
“VOA is not coming back to 2,000 people,” the source said. “I just don’t believe it’s going to be possible to reinvent things the way they were.”
Restoring trust
The absence of Voice of America in large markets throughout Africa and Latin America has allowed state media agencies from Russia and China to fill in the gap, Widakuswara said. Winning back the attention and trust of those potential audiences — up to 93.6 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than 100 million people in Latin America — will be hard, as the outlets that relied on VOA coverage had to fill their programming slots.
“We used to have 4,200 outlets around the world that took our content,” Widakuswara said. “We’ve been gone for a year. These outlets still need content.”
And while the agency has managed to produce some content in seven languages — Farsi, Mandarin, Dari, Pashto, Korean and the two dialects of the Kurdish language, according to Widakuswara — journalists have been limited in reporting on the ground, allowing much of its coverage to reflect the Trump administration’s point of view without the diversity of perspectives standard in balanced journalism. “We just don’t want to be any administration’s mouthpiece,” Widakuswara said.
It will also take time, she said, for the agency to win back the trust of its staff, pointing to Lake’s statement last year that USAGM was “not salvageable” and her suggestion that it had been infiltrated by spies.
“How can we continue to report without fear of favor? How can we continue to fulfill our mandate coming into that kind of traumatized newsroom?” Widakuswara said. “That, I think, is going to be a struggle.”
The administration has not yet revealed who, if anyone, will replace Lake, and both the White House and a USAGM spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on a succession plan.
Widakuswara said she and her colleagues understood the risk that the Trump administration could appoint another loyalist, but they remained prepared to defend the organization’s charter that demands it be a “consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”
“We went through this whole year suddenly becoming scholars of the law, and we will just continue to hold on to those legal principles and our rights,” she said. “We will continue fighting that way, whether it’s Kari Lake or anybody else with the same intention.”
