\n<\/p>\n
A federal judge ruled Saturday that Kari Lake unlawfully led the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) for several months last year and voided mass layoffs and other actions taken during that period to dismantle the agency.<\/p>\n
The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VOA), the US\u2019s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration moved to defund the agency in early 2025 and appointed Lake to oversee the agency, but did not receive Senate confirmation for her role. Despite efforts to defund the agency, Congress appropriated half a billion dollars more than Lake requested in funding for the agency in 2026.<\/p>\n
In her role, Lake cut contracts and over 1,000 staff positions at the agency when she was appointed to the role on 31 July before she relinquished the position on 19 November.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly the Appointments Clause or the Vacancies Act\u2019s exclusive structure may authorize service as a principal officer, and Lake satisfies the requirements of neither the statute nor the Constitution,\u201d US district court judge Royce C Lamberth wrote in the ruling.<\/p>\n
Lamberth leaned on the ruling by the third circuit court of appeals that ruled the appointment of Alina Habba, Donald Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer, to lead the US attorney\u2019s office in New Jersey was invalid.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdopting Lake\u2019s position would require the Court to find that the President can fill a first assistantship at any time during a vacancy in a Senate-confirmed office and then \u2026 elevate the first assistant to serve as the acting officer,\u201d Lamberth said in the ruling.<\/p>\n
Lake said in a statement on social media: \u201cWe will appeal this outrageous ruling from an activist DC District Court Judge.\u201d Lake also reposted a claim that the judge slept through arguments in the trial, responding \u201cnot surprised. Morbid obesity can cause massive issues with blood sugar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lamberth was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987.<\/p>\n
Plaintiffs in the case, Voice of America\u2019s White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper, said they felt \u201cvindicated and deeply grateful\u201d for the judge\u2019s ruling in the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe judge\u2019s ruling that Kari Lake\u2019s actions shall have no force or effect is a powerful step toward undoing the damage she has inflicted on this American institution that we love,\u201d they said in a statement. \u201cEven as we work through what this ruling means for colleagues harmed by her actions, it brings renewed hope and momentum to the next phase of our fight: restoring VOA\u2019s global operations and ensuring we continue to produce journalism, not propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge ruled Saturday that Kari Lake unlawfully led the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) for several months last year and voided mass layoffs and other actions taken during that period to dismantle the agency. The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[794,2239,675,23643,6920,4058,1472,205,4515,666,81,9264,23644],"class_list":{"0":"post-46179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-agency","10":"tag-judge","11":"tag-kari","12":"tag-lake","13":"tag-layoffs","14":"tag-mass","15":"tag-media","16":"tag-ran","17":"tag-rules","18":"tag-trump","19":"tag-unlawfully","20":"tag-voiding"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}