A United States federal judge has temporarily halted Donald Trump administration’s plan to lay off more than 500 employees of the Voice of America (VOA), ruling that the move violated earlier court orders and threatened the agency’s mission.
In a decision delivered on Monday, US District Judge Royce Lamberth suspended the terminations, which were set to take effect on September 30. The layoffs had been announced in August by Kari Lake, a senior advisor to the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), who has led President Donald Trump’s efforts to overhaul government-funded media.
“The Reduction in Force announced by Defendant Lake on or about August 29, 2025, is SUSPENDED and may NOT be implemented… until this Court has ruled on the plaintiffs’ Motion,” Lamberth wrote in his ruling, citing further legal proceedings scheduled for next month.
The judge noted that hundreds of VOA employees received termination notices in June, following what he described as the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to freeze the broadcaster — the first such move since its creation in 1942.
In his 19-page order, Lamberth recalled that the court had already issued a preliminary injunction in April, finding that Lake’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious and not in accordance with law.” Monday’s ruling, he explained, was meant to “facilitate the injunction and restore VOA’s programming so that the USAGM fulfills its statutory mandate.”
Lake, however, defended the layoffs as necessary. She argued that the June notices were part of a “long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”
The court pushed back strongly, accusing Lake and other defendants of resisting efforts to determine whether they had developed a compliance plan.
“The Court no longer harbours any doubt that defendants lack a plan to comply with the preliminary injunction, and instead have been running out the clock on the fiscal year while remaining in violation of… statutory obligations,” Lamberth wrote.
Founded during the Second World War, VOA and its sister outlets under USAGM , including Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, have long been tools of US soft power, tasked with promoting democracy and countering foreign propaganda.
Trump has frequently lashed out at US-funded media, dismissing VOA’s editorial independence and accusing the broadcaster of being too critical of his administration.
