Judge Blocks Trump Closing of Taxpayer-Funded Media Outlets

A federal judge sometimes known for leaning conservative in politically-charged cases temporarily halted the Trump administration shutting the parent organization for Voice of America and other taxpayer-funded media outlets.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a senior judge in the District of Columbia, ordered that the U.S. Agency for Global Media restore publicly-backed media outlets that report news to nations abroad. The judge also directed the USAGM to restore employment to everyone placed on administrative leave.

“In short, the defendants had no method or approach towards shutting down USAGM that this Court can discern,” Lamberth wrote in his opinion Tuesday, The Hill reported. 

“They took immediate and drastic action to slash USAGM, without considering its statutorily or constitutionally required functions as required by the plain language of the EO, and without regard to the harm inflicted on employees, contractors, journalists, and media consumers around the world.”

President Donald Trump had argued VOA and other outlets had pushed biased reporting. Meanwhile, USAGM has faced a number of spending and ethics controversies in recent years. 

Lamberth added in his opinion, “It is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary and capricious actions than the Defendants’ actions here.”

In March, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate non-statutory functions and reduce statutory functions of entities deemed unnecessary to what is required by law. 

The order eliminated the USAGM along with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Institute of Museum and Library Services, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, and Minority Business Development Agency.

Lamberth was appointed to the post by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. He was the chief judge of D.C. from 2008 to 2013. A chief judge for a district court works with clerk of court to oversee certain administrative matters such as monitoring caseloads, reviewing court budgets, resolving certain informal disputes, ensuring court security and emergency preparedness, and representing a specific district to outside groups such a bar associations or the Judicial Conference. 

In 2021, Lamberth ruled the D.C. Department of Corrections director and the D.C. jail warden were in contempt for failing to follow court orders to provide medical paperwork and records on a Jan. 6 defendant. In late 2024, he was also critical of Trump’s potential pardons of Jan. 6 defendants. He was known for delivering tough sentences to offenders found guilty in cases where the Jan. 6, 2021 protest at the Capitol turned violent. He even publicly denounced efforts to “minimize” the events of that day. 

Lamberth sided with the watchdog group Judicial Watch in 2018 in a case involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails kept on a private server, and wrote that Clinton’s secret email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”

During the Clinton administration, Lamberth held two Cabinet secretaries, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, in contempt of court for failing to produce documents in a class action lawsuit brought by Native Americans. 

However, Lamberth dismissed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton regarding the alleged mishandling of FBI files during the Clinton administration, a controversy known as “Filegate.”

Trump had previously announced his intent to appoint Kari Lake, a former news anchor and unsuccessful candidate for governor and senator in Arizona, to head up the VOA. 

VOA reporters, unions and the nonprofit Reporters Without Borders sued the Trump administration in March over the executive order. 

Lamberth rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to also restore funding for VOA’s sister networks, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle Eastern Broadcast Networks and the Open Technology Fund. The judge said his order does not apply to these outlets.

Andrew Celli, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, said the administration’s opposition to the USAGM networks is based on reporting on issues of Hamas and transgender issues. 

“They can use a scalpel or a sledgehammer; either way it’s viewpoint discrimination,” Celli argued.

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