In this June 15, 2020, file photo, the Voice of America building stands in Washington.
Andrew Harnik | AP
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday aimed at gutting the parent of U.S. government-funded media outlet Voice of America and six other federal agencies, his administration’s latest step to shrink bureaucracy.
The order instructs the agencies — largely little-known entities including one that provides funding for museums and libraries and one tackling homelessness — to reduce their operations to the bare minimum mandated by the law.
“This order continues the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary,” the order, disclosed late on Friday, says. Trump, who clashed with the Voice of America during his first term, picked former news anchor Kari Lake to be its director for his second. Lake, a staunch ally of the president, has often accused mainstream media of harboring anti-Trump bias.
VOA, an international media broadcaster that operates in more than 40 languages online and on radio and television, is overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The agency also funds Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
In addition to the Agency for Global Media, Trump’s order also targets the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, and the Minority Business Development Agency for cuts.
The order says those agencies should eliminate all operations not codified in statute as well as “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.” The order represents the latest step by Trump to remake the federal bureaucracy, a task he has largely put in the hands of tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. So far, the DOGE effort has produced potential cuts of more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce, the freezing of foreign aid, and the cancellation of thousands of programs and contracts.
Some Republicans have accused VOA and other publicly-funded media outlets of being biased against conservatives. Last month, Musk called for VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to be shut down in a post to his X social media platform.
In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Lake said that while she understood calls to completely dismantle VOA, she believed it could be improved.
