Unsilencing Voice of America

A judge ruled that Kari Lake’s tenure at USAGM was unconstitutional and ordered employees back to work. But a new appointee and legal challenges could make a fresh start difficult.

Can you rebuild a globe-spanning public media agency that has been summarily demolished? The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) may soon find out. On Tuesday, Judge Royce Lamberth ordered that more than a thousand employees who had been placed on administrative leave from USAGM a year ago must return to work by Monday.

It’s unclear, however, what this ruling will really mean for the USAGM rank and file. Kate Neeper, USAGM’s director of strategy, told me that staffers’ lawyers are still trying to understand the implications, since the decision followed another, in which Lamberth determined that Kari Lake, who for the past year was serving as the head of USAGM, held that position unlawfully because she did not receive Senate confirmation. Some USAGM staffers might be back in their offices on Monday, and yet its departments, including Voice of America, will hardly resemble the days of old. For one thing, in addition to the employees who were on leave, more than five hundred others had been laid off. “There’s so much damage that she has done to our institution, to our global audience, and to our trust as a reliable international broadcaster,” Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House bureau chief, told me, referring to Lake. “There are three hundred and sixty million people who have lost this voice. It’s going to be a matter of years to undo all the harm.”