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Published : 16 Mar 2025, 12:45 AM
Several employees at Voice of America were placed on paid leave on Saturday, one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order gutting the US government-funded media outlet's parent and six other federal agencies.
Multiple workers at Voice of America, an international media broadcaster that operates in more than 40 languages, shared with Reuters an email that placed them on administrative leave with full pay and benefits "until otherwise notified."
The emails, sent by a human resources executive at the US Agency for Global Media, the VOA's parent agency, instructed them not to enter their work premises or access internal systems.
It was not immediately clear how many employees were placed on leave. The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which also funds Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move follows Trump signing an executive order on Friday instructing USAGM and six other little-known agencies to reduce their operations to the bare minimum mandated by the law, saying it was necessary to shrink bureaucracy.
Trump, who clashed with the Voice of America during his first term, picked former news anchor Kari Lake to be its director for his second term. Lake, a staunch ally of the president, has often accused mainstream media of harboring anti-Trump bias.
In a message on the social media platform X on Saturday, Lake said Trump's order impacted USAGM "and its outlets VOA and OCB," referring to the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. She told employees of the agency to check their emails immediately.
In addition to USAGM, Trump's order also targeted the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, and the Minority Business Development Agency for cuts.
The order said those agencies should eliminate all operations not codified in statute as well as "reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law."
The order represents the latest step by Trump to remake the federal bureaucracy, a task he has largely put in the hands of tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. So far, the DOGE effort has produced potential cuts of more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce, the freezing of foreign aid, and the cancellation of thousands of programs and contracts.
Musk posted on X in February that VOA should be shut down.
Some Republicans have accused VOA and other publicly-funded media outlets of being biased against conservatives. Last month, Musk called for VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to be shut down in a post to his X social media platform.
In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Lake said that while she understood calls to completely dismantle VOA, she believed it could be improved.
