Overview

• Voice of America and its parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, issued termination notices to 639 employees, reducing the combined workforce by 85% since March to around 250 staff.
• Layoff notices include Persian Service journalists who were recalled last week for Middle East coverage, with terminations effective on September 1.
• Kari Lake, USAGM senior advisor, called VOA a “bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy” and said the agency will now operate near its statutory minimum of 81 employees.
• Journalists suing to block the cuts called the layoffs the “death of 83 years of independent journalism” and cautioned that adversarial regimes will exploit the void in the global information space.
• Legal challenges continue as the administration advances plans to replace professional VOA content with feeds from One America News Network, leaving the service’s future programming unclear.