VOA wins round with court against Trump shutdown

WASHINGTON: A judge late on Tuesday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to restore funding to Voice of America and other US-funded media, saying its abrupt shutdown of the outlets broke the law.

The federal judge in Washington agreed to a request led by the outlets’ employees for a preliminary injunction, a temporary order as a court examines the legal challenge in greater depth.

Trump, who has long jostled with the press and questioned the editorial rules that prohibit interference in government-funded media, on March 14 issued an executive order to eliminate the outlets.

The following day, Kari Lake, his firebrand supporter turned advisor, began issuing notices to terminate all funding, which was appropriated by Congress.

Lake and other Trump officials are “likely in direct violation of numerous federal laws,” wrote Royce Lamberth, a judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

The US Agency for Global Media, which supervises taxpayer-funded media, is allowed by law to redirect funds among its different programming by five percent or less, he wrote.

“Certainly, no law gives the agency the power to cut funding to the drastic degree that is alleged,” he wrote.

Lamberth wrote that Voice of America’s congressionally established charter states that the outlet will “‘serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news (that is) accurate, objective, and comprehensive’ but the defendants have silenced VOA for the first time.”