The fight to bring Voice of America back on the air

Why VOA matters and a look at the efforts to return it to its global role

Last updated April 2, 2026, at 10:00 a.m.

Much of Voice of America’s global operations have been silenced since President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 that effectively began dismantling the organization. Before the order, VOA was reaching more than 360 million people each week, focusing much of its programming on people who live under repressive governments and who cannot get truthful information from their state-run media outlets.

Underlying the mission of VOA, a federally funded U.S. broadcaster, is the belief that America is stronger when people who live in such countries can hear the truth about their governments, the United States and the world. VOA’s fact-based reporting gives people in countries with limited press freedom both information and hope, while also demonstrating how free expression itself fuels democracy.

A VOA broadcast technician works in a studio control room. Before VOA was largely silenced, it was broadcasting 959 hours of video and 1,432 hours of audio every week to its global audience.

Fight to get back on the air

Since Trump issued his executive order, approximately 600 VOA contractors, working as journalists and support staff, were fired, and about 800 VOA full-time employees were put on administrative leave. Former journalist-turned-politician Kari Lake has led VOA’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), for much of the time since Trump’s order. While in power, she canceled almost all VOA programming and forbade all but a small number of VOA journalists from reporting the news.

Employees at VOA and USAGM have filed three separate lawsuits challenging the administration’s attempts to shut down VOA and to prevent interference of its journalism. A federal judge overseeing the cases has repeatedly ruled in favor of the employees.

After nearly a year of litigation in two of the suits, Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in March 2026 that Lake was not lawfully appointed to lead USAGM and voided all her actions. He also ruled that her attempt to bring VOA and USAGM to the “statutory minimum” was unlawful and ordered employees on administrative leave be returned to work. The return-to-work order was later stayed by an appellate court.

On March 12, 2026, Trump nominated Sarah B. Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, to be CEO of USAGM, a position that needs Senate confirmation. He directed another State Department official, Michael Rigas, to serve temporarily as acting CEO of the agency.

By the numbers

Before Trump’s executive order, VOA produced nearly 2,400 hours of content each week across radio, television and digital — in 49 languages. Now, a skeleton crew is producing minimal content in just six languages. The quantity and quality of the content is a shadow of what it was.

Research had shown that 86% of VOA users considered the information they received from VOA to be very or somewhat trustworthy, and 76% said that the network’s broadcasts helped them to form opinions on important issues, according to USAGM’s 2024 Agency Performance Report.

With the vast majority of VOA programming suspended since March 2025, it has lost most, if not all, of its audience. In the absence of VOA’s credible news, U.S. adversaries, particularly Russia and China, are filling the space with propaganda that undermines U.S. interests.

A journalist with VOA’s Russian Service reports from Iowa, bringing news about America to a Russian-speaking audience.

Where we broadcast

Most Americans have never heard of VOA, and that is by design. VOA programming isn’t meant for a U.S. audience because the United States has a robust free press anchored in centuries of practice. Instead, VOA focuses on countering disinformation in places like Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela. Before being largely silenced, it was reaching people in more than 100 countries.

While access to the internet and social media have been growing around the world, Reporters Without Borders reported in May 2025 that more than half of the world’s population has little to no access to freely reported news because they live in a country where the state of press freedom is described as “very serious.”

VOA sought to counter that bleak statistic by finding ways around state chokeholds on information and by providing news to people in the languages they speak, one of the few media outlets to do so. Its audience was widespread and diverse: a factory worker listening to radio broadcasts in Mandarin; a farmer watching television programs in Swahili; an office worker reading VOA’s website in Farsi.

Pledge to tell the truth

From the beginning, VOA has promised to tell the truth. During its first broadcast in 1942 during World War II, announcer William Harlan Hale said: “Daily at this time, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.”

VOA’s early broadcasts told its audiences about Allied setbacks in the war, which built credibility. As John Houseman, VOA’s first director, said later, “Only thus could we establish a reputation for honesty which we hoped would pay off on that distant but inevitable day when we would start reporting our own invasions and victories.”

This ethos was further developed when VOA adopted its Charter in 1960, which was codified into law by Congress and signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976. Its first principle: “VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. VOA news will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive.”

VOA’s commitment to delivering journalism and not propaganda is the reason that it gained its massive audience and earned their trust.

However, since March 2025, the Trump administration has sought to use VOA to almost exclusively broadcast the administration’s point of view. A lawsuit filed in March 2026 accused USAGM management, and Lake in particular, of using censorship and propaganda at VOA.

Kari Lake testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 25, 2025.

Role of Congress

Congress has long played an important role for VOA and its parent agency. In 1953, it established the U.S. Information Agency, the precursor to USAGM, as an independent federal agency. It ratified VOA’s Charter in 1976, reinforced the “firewall” protecting VOA from political interference in its editorial decisions in 1994, and passed yearly budgets funding USAGM and VOA, most with large bipartisan support.

In February, Congress passed a bipartisan spending bill for fiscal year 2026 that funded USAGM and VOA, rejecting attempts by Lake to shutter them.

The bill allocated $653 million for USAGM, of which $199.5 million was designated for VOA. That figure was down nearly a quarter from VOA’s 2024 funding of $260 million. However, it was more than four times the $153 million requested by the administration to “support the orderly shutdown of USAGM operations.” Trump signed the bill into law, part of a larger spending deal to fund much of the government.

VOA journalist Robert Bauer on the air in 1942.

Beginnings

By the end of the 1930s, the United States was the only world power without a government-sponsored international radio service. Other nations that were regularly broadcasting beyond their borders included the Soviet Union, Italy, Britain, France, Germany and Japan. The outbreak of World War II prompted the U.S. to begin creating the infrastructure for a federally funded broadcaster.

Throughout its more than 80-year history, VOA has impacted its global audience through its credible reporting. Its programming during the Cold War is widely credited with playing a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Among the forces that tore holes in the Iron Curtain was the steady bombardment by the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, and the BBC,” said Strobe Talbott, former U.S. deputy secretary of state during the Clinton administration.

In recent decades, VOA has shone the truth in its coverage of events around the world, including the war on terrorism, the Arab spring, the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.