A federal judge ruled on Thursday that Trump administration official Kari Lake can't unilaterally fire the director of Voice of America, saying she's breaking the law in trying to do so.
Instead, by law, Lake must have the explicit backing of an advisory panel set up by Congress to help insulate the international broadcaster and its sister networks from political pressure. As President Trump dismissed six of the seven members of the panel shortly after taking office and has not named their replacements to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Lake cannot take such an action.
Voice of America Director Michael Abramowitz had initially been offered a reassignment to oversee a handful of employees at a shortwave radio transmission facility in Greenville, N.C. But the reassignment would have been illegal, too, U.S Senior District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote.
"The defendants do not even feign that their efforts to remove Abramowitz comply with that statutory requirement," Lamberth wrote in his decision. "There is no longer a question of whether the termination was lawful."
Lamberth is presiding over two lawsuits related to Lake's efforts to dismantle Voice of America and its federal parent agency. (In his ruling, Lamberth called Abramowitz's attempted firing "yet another twist in the saga of the U.S. Agency for Global Media's efforts to dial back the operations of Voice of America contrary to statutory requirements.")
Abramowitz is among the plaintiffs suing Lake and the agency.
"I am very gratified by Judge Lamberth's ruling and his finding that the U.S. Agency for Global Media must follow the law as Congress mandated," Abramowitz says in a comment shared with NPR. "It is especially urgent for Voice of America to resume robust programming, which is so important for the security and influence of the United States."
The law states that Voice of America "serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news" abroad. Under Lake, Voice of America has been stripped of all but four of its 49 language services; more than 90% of its workforce has been laid off or put on leave and its creation of original content and coverage has dried to a trickle.
Lake said the Trump administration would appeal Lamberth's ruling. "Elections have consequences, and President Trump runs the executive branch," she said. "I have confidence that the Constitution will eventually be enforced, even if not by Judge Lamberth and other radical district judges."
At a court hearing Monday, U.S. Justice Department attorneys pointed to President Trump's executive order in March to reduce the network to the smallest level allowed by law. As an example, Lamberth kept returning to the elimination of the Korean language service — though programming in that language is required by Congress under the law.
The government's attorney, Michael Velchik, said he contested that it was required, but did not elaborate.
In making their arguments, Velchik and his colleague Abigail Stout relied heavily on the executive powers assigned to the president under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and said that Lake was simply responding to that mandate. The Justice Department has asserted Constitutional authorities for the president that represent a vast expansion of his powers as commonly understood.
Lamberth, a conservative jurist first appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, on Monday pronounced Lake "verging on contempt of court" for failing to provide it with information he had demanded for months. He noted that Congress had expressly directed where hundreds of millions of dollars allocated for the agency should go, with the law affording little wiggle room. Simply telling hundreds of employees to cool their heels at home for months, he said, was a waste of taxpayer money.
In his ruling on Thursday, Lamberth batted away the government's procedural arguments and its broader claims about executive powers in this instance. And he rejected the assertion that the law protecting Voice of America's journalistic independence was unconstitutional.
"Defendants raise just one defense as to why the Court should decline to issue an injunction: they call upon the Court to declare that [law] violates the separation of powers by unduly interfering with the President's authority to remove inferior officers," he wrote. "Because Supreme Court precedent on the President's removal power directly contradicts their position, the Court cannot do so."
During the final stretch of Trump's first term, the chief executive he named to oversee the U.S. Agency for Global Media fought to exercise greater ideological control of all the networks funded by the federal government. They include nonprofits such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, among others.
In 2020, led by a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Marco Rubio, then a U.S. Senator representing Florida, Congress passed legislation to insulate the networks from political interference. The advisory board was part of that firewall.
Shortly after taking office for a second term in January, Trump fired all the members of that panel, called the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, save Rubio who, now serving as the U.S. Secretary of State, is automatically a member of the board. The president has not named any replacements.
As Lamberth recounted, in mid-March, after Trump's executive order, Abramowitz was indefinitely placed on paid administrative leave. In early July, he was told that the agency intended to reassign him to the shortwave radio station in North Carolina. The letter confirming this intent to shift him said he would be fired if he did not accept the new position.
Abramowitz filed a motion to the court on July 23 asking the judge to intervene.
Eight days later, a senior adviser to the agency wrote to Abramowitz that it was intending to remove him. Lake would serve as the final arbiter.
The government attorneys argued on Lake's behalf that Abramowitz should have gone through administrative remediation. But Judge Lamberth noted the law explicitly dictates that a Voice of America director cannot be appointed or removed without a bipartisan majority -- five of the seven members.
Lake, named initially to be a senior adviser to the agency, is now running it and has styled herself as its acting chief executive. As NPR has reported, it is not clear Lake is legally eligible for the presidentially-appointed role. Neither she nor the White House has produced any documentation that Trump has named her to it, despite repeated requests.
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