The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) has terminated the federal grant that for the past 80 years has funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA), RFE/RL reported on Saturday, as the Trump administration continues its ruthless pursuit of federal budget cuts.
RFE/RL president and CEO Steven Capus warned in a statement that the broadcaster’s defunding “would be a massive gift to America’s enemies” and that “autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate” its demise.
“Without us, the nearly 50 million people in closed societies who depend on us for accurate news and information each week won’t have access to the truth about America and the world,” Capus continued.
The defunding, which was signed off by Kari Lake, a senior advisor to the head of USAGM, came into immediate effect on Saturday, and RFE/RL has already placed staff members on paid leave until further notice.
Voice of America (VOA) Director Michael Abramowitz said that around 1,300 of its employees had also been placed on paid leave. “For the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” he wrote.
“We’ve been shut down. I’m out of a job,” one VOA staffer told independent Russian news outlet Agentstvo, adding that staff were no longer being allowed into the office.
On Friday, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring seven federal agencies to “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law”.
VOA is the largest and oldest US international broadcaster, and produces digital, TV and radio content in 48 languages. RFE, which was set up to broadcast to communist states in Eastern Europe in the 1940s, was eventually merged with RL, which broadcast to the Soviet Union, in 1976.