Multiple employees of the US international broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) were placed on leave on Saturday. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, the initial move is a paid leave, which the affected staff are required to take effect immediately.
It remains unclear at this point whether the entire VOA staff will be released in this manner and the impact on the broadcasting operations is also difficult to estimate. The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which also funds Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.
The leave of absences comes a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order, which froze the funding of the VOA’s parent organization and six other federal agencies. The affected agencies and organizations were instructed in the order to reduce their activities to the “legally required minimum” to “streamline bureaucracy”.
Several VOA employees, who send in more than 40 languages, forwarded an email to Reuters, in which they were placed on leave with full pay and full social benefits “until further notice”. The emails, sent by a personnel department employee of the USAGM, the parent organization of the VOA, instructed the employees not to enter their workspaces or access internal systems.
In early February, Trump ally Elon Musk called for the closure of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, citing that the station wastes taxpayer dollars and is irrelevant.
The VOA was last in the headlines when Donald Trump nominated former TV moderator Kari Lake to lead the organization, with the task of “promoting US values worldwide and countering fake news”. In 2023, the Republican had called for the suspension of financial support for Ukraine.
On the social media platform X, Lake wrote on Saturday that Trump’s order concerned the USAGM and its outposts, VOA and OCB (Office of Cuba Broadcasting). She urged the agency’s employees to check their inboxes for incoming emails.