Though President Donald Trump has encountered one legal challenge to his agenda after another since taking office in January, he just notched a key win in a case involving cuts to a federally funded agency he believes propagates anti-American bias.
As Fox News reports, the D.C. Circuit federal Court of Appeals granted the Trump administration's request for a stay on a lower court ruling that required reinstatement of more than 1,000 employees of Voice of America as well as the resumption of the outlet's broadcasting operations.
It was back in March that Trump issued an executive order designed to begin the process of restructuring and potentially dismantling the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and Voice of America.
In describing the motivations behind the move, a senior White House official explained to Fox News Digital that “Voice of America has been out of step with America for years. It serves as the Voice of Radical America and has pushed divisive propaganda for years now.”
An article on the topic published on the White House website quoted a former longtime VOA correspondent as saying, “I have monitored the agency's bureaucracy along with many of its reporters and concluded that it has essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias aligned with partisan national media. It has sought to avoid accountability for violations of journalistic standards and mismanagement.”
Trump's March order resulted in roughly 1,300 VOA employees being place on administrative leave, the termination of key contracts, and an effective halt to the entity's broadcasting activities.
That, in turn, led to the filing of the federal lawsuit through which Saturday's stay was obtained, one which reversed an April order from District Court Judge Royce Lamberth requiring VOA employees to be reinstated.
Not surprisingly, Trump officials were pleased with the outcome at the appeals court, with senior USAGM advisor Kari Lake offering her reaction to Fox News Digital.
Lake said, “We are eager to accomplish President Trump's America First agenda, which has always been to modernize and make our government efficient while cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.”
She went on, “Now that we have a favorable ruling in the appeals court, we look forward to accomplishing the plan we've always had; to bring VOA into the 21st century.”
Lake also made her opinion on the ruling known on X, characterizing it as a “BIG WIN.”
In an apparent reference to the appeals panel's emphasis on the judiciary's required level of deference to executive power in matters related to federal personnel and contracting, Lake added, “Turns out the District Court judge will not be able to manage the agency as he seemed to want to.”
Amid the issuance of the stay in the VOA case, Trump on Thursday escalated his battle against what he says is federally funded left-wing broadcast bias, signing an executive order to cease taxpayer funding for National Public Radio and PBS, as NBC News noted.
Given that proponents of NPR and PBS are already asserting that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, through which they receive public dollars, is not subject to Executive Branch authority, it seems likely that another heated legal battle in the realm of federally funded media outlets is just about to begin.
