New York (AP) – The voice of America cannot yet be reduced to silence.
On Friday, a federal judge interrupted the efforts of the Trump administration to dismantle the international service of news funded by the US government of eight decades, describing the decision as a “classic case of arbitrary and capricious decision -making”.
Judge James Paul Oetken blocked the US agency for the world’s media, which manages Voice of America, from the affair of more than 1,200 journalists, engineers and other staff that he sidelined two weeks ago following President Donald Trump ordering his cut funding.
Oetken made a temporary prohibition prescription which prohibited the agency from “any other attempted termination, reduction in force, to place on leave or to leave
The order also prohibits the world media agency from finishing funding for subsidies for its other broadcasting points of sale, including Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Afghanistan. The agency said Thursday that it restored the funding of radio free Europe after a judge in Washington, DC ordered him to do so.
“This is a decisive victory for the freedom of the press and the first amendment, and a clear reprimand” to “the total contempt of the Trump administration for the principles which define our democracy,” said the lawyer of the applicants Andrew G. Celi Jr.
The approach of the Trump administration is criticized
During an audience on Friday in Manhattan, Oetken blamed the Trump administration of having “taken a hammer at an agency which was statuly authorized and funded by the congress”.
The judge criticized the agency’s management, including Special Advisor Kari Lake, for having taken the “apparently overnight” taking over the world Megaphone and with the US government with “no consideration of the effects”.
Oetken ruled after a coalition of journalists from Voice of America, unions and the defense group of non -profit journalists, reporters without borders, continued the Trump administration last week to block the cups. In the end, they seek to bring Voa back in the air.
The complainants argued that the closure had violated the conclusion of a court during Trump’s first mandate that VOA journalists have a free firewall protecting them from the white house interference. Their absence of waves has left a void that is filled with “propagandists whose messages will monopolize the world waves,” said the complainants.
Trump and other Republicans accused America’s voice of a “left-handed bias” and do not project “pro-American” values to his global audience, even if it is compulsory by the congress to serve as a non-partisan press organization.
Voice of America left the air shortly after Trump published a decree of March 14 which wrote the funding of the agency for the world media and six other unrelated federal entities – part of its campaign to shrink the government and align its political program. He also moved this month terminate VOA contracts with press agencies, including the Associated Press.
The White House called the service “The voice of radical America” and said that Trump’s order “would ensure that taxpayers are no longer in hooking for radical propaganda”. He cited the cover which, according to him, was “too favorable” to former president Joe Biden, as well as to the stories of white privileges, racial profiling and transgender migrants in search of asylum.
The congress has affected nearly $ 860 million for the world’s media agency for current exercise.
Additional proceedings are pending
Three federal proceedings in Washington, DC contest other aspects of the cups, including one brought by the director of the voice of America and the three journalists. Oetken said he would govern a later date at the government’s request to get his case there.
Voice of America has been working since the Second World War, radiating news in authoritarian countries which have no free press. He began as a counterpoint to Nazi propaganda and played a leading role in the efforts of the American government’s Cold War to slow down the propagation of communism.
According to the trial, the employees of Voice of America were invited to finish their broadcasts live on March 15 and then to leave the building. Shortly after, said the trial, they lost access to the agency’s computer systems, including emails. The Voice of America news website has not been updated since.
Lake, a former presenter of television and political candidate, said that she had determined how many people are required to manage some of these points of sale at the minimum personnel levels authorized by law.
Some people have been brought back to work and at least one service – Radio Marti in Cuba – returned in the air, told One America News Network in an interview published Thursday on X.
“We are going to get prosecution,” said Lake. “It is only by the course. We were victims – President Trump A, I myself – of” Lawfare “. It is the same distribution of characters who tries to put the land mines in the ways of each stage of President Trump and this administration tries to do this government online where we can afford it.”
Lake, echoing the complaints of the White House, said: “We want to make sure that these agencies are in accordance with what our American values are. We are racing the history of America. We are not rapping the stories of our opponents.”
“By God,” she said, “we are not going to extinguish anti-American garbage.”
___
The associated media writer David Bauder contributed to this report.
