The Trump administration has terminated 639 employees at Voice of America and its parent organization in the latest round of sweeping cuts that have reduced the international broadcasting service to a fraction of its former size.
The mass terminations announced Friday rounds out the Trump-led elimination of 1,400 positions since March and represents the near-complete dismantling of an organization founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, whose first broadcast declared: “We bring you voices from America.”
Just 250 employees now remain across the entire parent group the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), who operated what was America’s primary tool for projecting democratic values globally.
“For decades, American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that’s been riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste. That ends now,” said Kari Lake, Trump’s senior advisor to USAGM, in Friday’s termination announcement.