U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who issued overly harsh sentences to the J6 defendants, even going beyond prosecutors’ recommendations, is refusing to allow cuts to the bloated, leftist Voice of America (VOA). This makes no sense, considering regular media not funded by the government is drastically shrinking. This is because there is less of a need in the modern era for traditional media due to the rise of social media and citizen journalists.
The mainstream media has suffered from leftist bias for years (only 3 percent of journalists are Republicans), so Republicans are deserting the media. The decline is severe, with even the most well-known news organizations experiencing deep cuts — The Washington Post laid off 30 percent of its workforce in February.
The VOA controversy began early last year, when the Trump administration, through Kari Lake, placed over 1,000 employees out of about 1,147 at VOA on administrative leave. Lake framed the cuts as part of a broader mandate from President Donald Trump to "cut bloated bureaucracy, eliminate waste, and restore accountability to government.” She said last March when canceling an expensive new lease for USAGM, “From top-to-bottom this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer — a national security risk for this nation — and irretrievably broken.”
Partisan unions, including AFSCME, predictably filed groundless lawsuits. On March 7, Lamberth ruled that Lake’s appointment to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) was improper since the U.S. Senate had not approved her as acting CEO, so all of the layoffs were void (the USAGM oversees VOA).
The government is appealing his decision, but moved Lake to a deputy position, nominating Sarah Rogers as permanent USAGM CEO and naming Michael Rigas as acting CEO.
Lamberth took a tortured interpretation of the law in order to come to his decision. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) allows for appointments without Senate confirmation as a “first assistant” to the acting CEO. So Lake was first appointed as a deputy CEO. When VOA CEO Victor Morales stepped down, the FVRA allowed Lake to replace him. The relevant part of FVRA states “[T]he President (and only the President) may direct an officer or employee of such Executive agency to perform the functions and duties of the vacant office temporarily in an acting capacity.”
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But Lamberth pretended this violated the spirit of the FVRA, attempted to technically nitpick the language, and said the downsizing was "arbitrary and capricious." The latter is one of those vague provisions in law that can be interpreted almost any way, which progressive judges frequently exploit to thwart conservatives.
Trump has referred to VOA as “The Voice of Radical America.” Daniel Robinson, a journalist who worked for the VOA and USAGM for 34 years, exposed the bias in recent op-eds. “I have monitored the agency’s bureaucracy along with many of its reporters and concluded that it has essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias aligned with partisan national media,” he said in a November op-ed for The Washington Times. VOA “throws Associated Press or Reuters stories online” instead of doing its own work, Robinson said in another op-ed.
The demise of the private mainstream media has been staggering. Last year, around 3,400 journalism jobs were eliminated in the U.S. and U.K., and 2026 is on track to exceed that pace early on. The Los Angeles Times cut one-third of its workforce in January 2024. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution laid off 15 percent of its staff in February and ended its print version.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is shutting down completely on May 3. Cumulus Media, one of the largest radio broadcasting companies in the country, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month. CBS News Radio shut down this month as part of CBS News layoffs. BuzzFeed News shut down in 2023 and Vice Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy that year. About 136 U.S. newspapers closed last year.
Lamberth’s hostility towards conservatives is shameless. He displayed immense hostility towards the J6 defendants, criticizing descriptions of them as "political prisoners." He said labels like that were "preposterous," "shameless," and distortions of history, calling the J6 protest the "antithesis of patriotism."
Another adverse decision Lamberth made against conservatives was approving a search warrant for well-loved former Fox News reporter James Rosen's personal communications regarding a leak from the Obama administration. The DOJ secretly read Rosen’s emails without notifying him. Two other judges had previously ruled that Rosen must be notified. Of course, Rosen’s emails revealed no wrongdoing — it was a fishing expedition. This was clear government overreach that created a chilling precedent for journalism.
The Privacy Protection Act (PPA) of 1980 states that journalists' work product and materials are exempt from searches or seizures unless there's probable cause that the journalist committed a crime. The DOJ invoked the PPA's crime exception by labeling Rosen an "aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" under the Espionage Act for allegedly encouraging a source to share classified info. But as the emails revealed, Rosen was merely engaging in routine newsgathering; there was no probable cause.
It’s one thing if private media spreads leftist views. But for taxpayers to fund leftist propaganda? The VOA Charter states that VOA news will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive, and will represent America, not any single segment of American society. Why is this judge fighting so hard to allow VOA’s partisan journalists to continue spewing out Democratic propaganda, illegally violating its charter using our tax dollars? Rogue judges like Lamberth are destroying our country by not applying the law accurately due to their partisan views and hate.
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