STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A federal judge has ruled that a Trump administration official illegally tried to dismantle the Voice of America. That's the government-funded broadcaster that provides news to people living under repressive regimes. The judge ruled that Kari Lake, a Republican politician, did not have authority to oversee the network and its federal parent agency, and the judge has declared her actions void. NPR's David Folkenflik was the first to question Lake's legal authority to run VOA, and he's now with us, David, good morning.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What did Kari Lake change or try to change at VOA?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, let's start with what VOA is. Voice of America was starred in World War II and has continued in the decades since to provide sort of factual news - not propaganda - to countries that don't have a free press or don't have really a functioning free press. Kari Lake and President Trump have attacked it as basically being propaganda and hostile to President Trump itself. She sought to effectively dismantle it. So she laid off hundreds and hundreds of employees at Voice of America and a couple of its sister networks. She tried to cut off funding from other networks, like Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, that are funded by the federal government to reach foreign lands. She canceled a contract for a new headquarters that her predecessors said would save tens of millions of dollars for the federal government, and she basically tried to cut these things down to the bone to essentially make it impossible for them to continue to function.
INSKEEP: Yeah. In some cases, programming was stopped or disrupted. So why did the judge nullify all of that?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, previously - there are these lawsuits challenging basically all of these things. And previously, the judge in this case is a senior U.S. district court judge named Royce C. Lamberth. He took issue with some of her decisions. Not only was she, you know, cutting back deeply. These things were effectively blocked from broadcasting at all. And he said, you know, that that wasn't legal. The appeals court took issue with some of what he did. But nonetheless, this time, he sidestepped that question. He said, look, this isn't a question of whether the actions she took were legal. It's a question of saying she didn't have the authority to make those decisions.
She was assigned in late February of last year to be a senior adviser to the agency by President Trump. But within days, she was designated as having basically all of the powers of the CEO, which is a position that's supposed to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Later, in July, she was made deputy CEO, and a few weeks after that, she announced that she was the acting CEO. Again in July, she was delegated all the powers of the CEO. But I couldn't find that the White House had actually named her to that.
I asked her about a dozen times, and I asked the agency that she runs called the U.S. Agency for Global Media over the Voice of America, and I asked the White House, who named her? Did the president make this announcement? Is there any documentation? - all of which has to exist just to become the acting CEO. I never found or was given any documentation for that. The judge ruled precisely this. In neither case, neither as senior adviser or as acting CEO or whatever, did she have the authority to take on those powers. He said she didn't seem to have the ability to be acting CEO either.
INSKEEP: So she's not an official. She's, like, a rogue politician, according to the judge. How has Lake responded, though?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, she said she's going to appeal. She's called Lamberth an activist judge. She said to me she was acting legally, but, again, there was none of this documentation for that.
INSKEEP: Is there any way to reverse all the layoffs and other cancellations and changes?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, if the judge's ruling stands, there's hope among Voice of America journalists that they can do so, but it's hard to unwind changes or put the toothpaste back in the tube, as one VOA official said on Twitter in recent hours. Many people have taken different jobs. Some of these networks have effectively been shut down. And, you know, if you cut off these relationships with these hundreds of millions of listeners a week, it's hard to rebuild, and yet people are hoping to do just that.
INSKEEP: NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik is still broadcasting. David, thanks so much.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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