Occasionally there is a ray of light that shines through the darkness. We saw one immense victory earlier this month when Elon Musk lost $25 million and a judgeship in the State of Wisconsin. Righteousness prevailed. What a relief that was. Now again today we see more hope. Trump ordered the shutdown of the Voice of America but a U.S. District Court judge said uh uh. That’s unconstitutional. It’s tragic that we live in a day and age where we cheer when the actual guardrails of the law manage to hold and not collapse, but that’s where we are. And cheering sure feels good.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the administration’s rush to dismantle the VOA and related news organizations funded by the U.S. Agency for Global Media resulted in the suspension of hundreds of journalists and employees. It put some overseas correspondents at risk of being deported to their home countries, the judge noted. And Lamberth said the silencing of VOA — for the first time in 80 years — also deprived hundreds of millions of listeners of a reliable source of news in parts of the world that lack a free press.
Lamberth said the administration offered virtually no justification for the draconian cuts, suggesting it was working to comply with President Donald Trump’s March 14 executive order requiring a significant scaling back of the agency. Yet the cuts were so bone-deep, Lamberth said, that they likely violated even Trump’s command that the programs continue to operate at legally required minimum levels of service.
“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 [executive order], and without regard to the harm inflicted on employees, contractors, journalists, and media consumers around the world,” Lamberth said. “It is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary and capricious actions than the Defendants’ actions here.”
The judge, a Reagan appointee, is ordering the Trump administration to immediately restore all employees and contractors to their news programs and unfreeze funding streams for other affiliated networks like Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks. He also ordered officials to restore VOA programming to fulfill the legal mandate that it “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”
The Voice Of America is the only source of information available to many countries where there is no such thing as a free press. It operated behind the Iron Curtain back in the day. One of the arguments that Judge Lamberth presented was that the administration’s “unwillingness to expend funds in accordance with the congressional appropriations laws is a direct affront to the power of the legislative branch.” Funding for the Voice Of America has continued unabated for decades and the cessation of funding should therefore, logically, be dependent upon an act of Congress and not one of Mad King Donald’s moods of the moment.
Trump is hell bent on destroying as much of the free press as he can. ABC/Disney made a horrific decision to settle the simple defamation lawsuit between themselves and Trump for $15 million. It remains to be seen what CBS/Paramount will do with the 60 Minutes lawsuit. Maybe today’s ruling will give the lawyers at CBS a little spine. Or, maybe it’s too late for that and the corporate media is going to choose to fold altogether.
In any event, savor today’s good news. Trump has a lot of things blowing up around him simultaneously. He probably won’t pay a great deal of attention to this VOA issue, because he’s got his hands full with the ongoing drama of Pete Hegseth aka SECDRUNK, the yo yo-ing stock market, and having to fly to Rome for the Pope’s funeral, when he’d so much rather be out playing golf. Sometimes small wins turn out to be much bigger than they appear and this win by the Voice Of America is a wonderful thing.
Trumpler’s bottomless stupidity never fails to stupify. Instead of destroying Voice of America as he tried to do, he could have just taken it over, installed a bunch of bootlicker ex-Foxers and turned it into his very own global propaganda outlet. His lies and boasting could have been beamed out 24/7 in the guise of (guess what) the voice of America. Imagine what the unemployed Tucker could have done with it on Trump’s behalf. Once again, Donald’s empty head saved us from him, for which we will be eternally grateful. Grateful to Judge Lamberth too.
Why “ex-Foxers?” He could’ve just as easily allowed a veritable simulcast of Fox “News” over VOA. The American taxpayers would then literally be putting money in the Murdochs’ pockets without anyone having to actually watch the propaganda machine in *this* country (but, of course, the delusional regular viewers would keep watching any way but Fox wouldn’t have to worry about advertising rates interfering with their profits).
Well, hot DAMN for the good news! It’s worth a celebration!