Saturday Rewind: Restoring the Voice of America?
Finding that failed MAGA politician Kari Lake wasn't fit to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, a federal judge invalidated her purge of Voice of America.
Now that two-time failed MAGA politician Kari Lake’s tenure leading the U.S. Agency for Global Media has been invalidated by a federal judge, Donald Trump named a successor that is raising other alarm bells.
U.S. Agency for Global Media is the umbrella agency that supervises Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America, founded during World War II to counter Nazi propaganda.
Trump’s new nominee to run the agency, Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers, is under fire for her ties to Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right extremist party. The Washington Post reports that Rogers tends to locate alleged free speech threats more often in content moderation decisions by Western social media companies than in censorship by autocratic regimes in Iran, China, and Russia, where Voice of America helps vault information blackouts.
Her nomination continues the Trump 2.0 hostility to international public broadcasting that has been an instrument of U.S. soft power for nearly a century. Voice of America penetrated the Iron Curtain during the Cold War and operated in 49 languages.
During her tenure, Lake sought to dismantle the agency, sending termination notices to more than 600 staffers in the name of combating bias. Lake, an election denier, was a leading purveyor of misinformation about U.S. democratic systems. She unsuccessfully ran for elected office in Arizona twice, claiming fruitlessly that the races were rigged after she lost.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, invalidated Lake’s mass layoffs last week when he ruled that she was elevated to her office illegally, but its future remains uncertain. Trump’s Justice Department formally notified the judge that Rogers has been nominated to replace Lake, and Rogers still faces confirmation by the Senate.
In an interview that aired earlier this week, I discussed Lamberth’s ruling with attorney Skye Perryman, who brought the case against Lake for Democracy Forward. We discussed Voice of America’s history, Lake’s legacy and the path ahead for the institution’s restoration.
Watch that interview in full on the All Rise News playlist on Legal AF.
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Also on the playlist this week:
Hegseth’s boat strikes are headed for an international reckoning.
Why A.I. juggernaut Anthropic’s fight against the Pentagon matters
Florida Bar backflips on investigating Lindsey Halligan
