Name: VOA to Slash More Than 500 Jobs in Latest Effort to Reduce Workforce Under Trump
Uploaded: 2025-09-01T12:40:15.000Z
Description: The move marks the latest efforts to slash the VOA workforce following a months-long legal battle that has placed the agency in limbo.

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The Trump administration has moved to cut 532 government positions at Voice of America (VOA) in the latest round of layoffs for the federally-funded international broadcaster.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media, VOA’s parent company, announced on Friday that it has initiated a reduction in force, or RIF, effort of a large number of its full-time federal employees, according to acting chief of the agency Kari Lake.

“We are conducting this RIF at the President's direction to help reduce the federal bureaucracy, improve agency service, and save the American people more of their hard-earned money,” Lake wrote in a <a href="https://x.com/KariLake/status/1961600955343843577">statement</a>.

The move marks the latest efforts to slash the VOA workforce following a months-long legal battle that has placed the agency in limbo.

In March, mostly all staff were placed on administrative leave after President Donald Trump issued an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/continuing-the-reduction-of-the-federal-bureaucracy/">executive order</a> ordering VOA's dismantling as part of broader efforts to cut costs and significantly reduce the federal workforce. VOA's parent company, according to Trump, was among the agencies determined to be "unnecessary."

But a federal judge in April ruled that the Trump administration illegally shut down VOA. Later, an appellate panel <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/us-appeals-court-halts-order-allowing-voice-of-america-employees-back-to-work-5852085">said</a> that a lower court did not have the authority to order its employees be brought back to work at the agency.

This latest round of cuts come the day after a federal judge blocked Lake from firing VOA Director Michael Abramowitz. He was placed on administrative leave, along with most of the VOA staff, in June. Abramowitz was told he would be fired effective Aug. 31, according to <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.141.0.pdf">court documents</a>.

The Trump administration’s goal is to reduce the VOA’s workforce from more than 1,000 to 81 employees.

Responding to the June layoffs, White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara suggested it would be impossible to continue to create the same valuable content with such minimal staff.

“You can’t make staff this size produce content for a global audience of 360 million weekly,” Widakuswara said. “It’s comical if it weren’t so tragic. We’re not just losing our jobs and journalism, we are abdicating our voice and influence in the world.”

Lake previously said the June layoffs of 85 percent of employees and its overseers was part of a “long overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”

Moving forward, Lake said, the company, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, will restore its original mission of spreading truth.

Its original mission was to broadcast reliable, objective news in authoritarian countries that lacked freedom of the press.

“USAGM will continue to fulfill its statutory mission after this RIF—and will likely improve its ability to function and provide the truth to people across the world who live under murderous Communist governments and other tyrannical regimes,” Lake said. “I look forward to taking additional steps in the coming months to improve the functioning of a very broken agency and make sure America's voice is heard abroad where it matters most.”

VOA broadcasts in more than 40 languages and provides news, information, and cultural programming through the Internet, mobile and social media, radio, and television, according to the official <a href="https://www.voanews.com/">website</a>. The networks together reach an estimated 427 million people.

<em>Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.</em>

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