Radio Free Asia lays off most of its staff amid funding battle with Trump
Radio Free Asia is laying off most of its staff and shutting down many of its news broadcasts and streams, amid a funding battle with the Trump administration.
Friday's layoff notices are the latest impacts of President Trump's crusade against the international broadcasters the United States has bankrolled for decades.
Bay Fang, the CEO of Radio Free Asia, said the cuts are necessary because the Trump administration has withheld its congressionally allocated funding, even though a federal judge sided with the broadcaster last week.
Other US-funded international broadcasters are stuck in similar situations. The outlets keep winning favorable court rulings, but the Trump administration is appealing. Meanwhile, the journalists who want to return to their jobs say acute damage is being done.
'Every day that we're not broadcasting is a day that will allow adversaries to spread propaganda unchecked,' Voice of America journalist Patsy Widakuswara, the lead plaintiff in one of the cases, told CNN.
Trump moved to shut down Voice of America and strip other broadcasters of federal funding in mid-March. Half a dozen lawsuits have been filed to reverse the moves.
On Friday, the heads of Radio Free Asia and two other broadcasters, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, wrote an impassioned letter about the 'irreparable harm' being caused by Trump's actions.
The letter was addressed to several officials at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including Kari Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial and Senate candidate whom Trump installed atop the agency earlier this year.
'Our journalists are terrified that the withdrawal of support from their employers will lead to harassment, prison, and worse,' the letter stated.
'We urge you to restore our funding immediately before further irreparable reputational harm is done to the United States — and before innocent lives are needlessly and recklessly lost,' it concluded.
In some especially serious cases, staffers who work for the networks may be at risk of deportation back to repressive regimes.
Radio Free Asia's layoffs on Friday exempted several of its most vulnerable staffers for that very reason. The organization is trying to keep the proverbial lights on for as long as possible while fighting for funding in court.
Staffers were heartened when Radio Free Asia and Voice of America won a preliminary injunction from Judge Royce C. Lamberth last week.
But the administration appealed, and on Thursday night a circuit court paused Lamberth's ruling 'to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motions.' The judges said it 'should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of those motions.'
Lamberth issued another ruling this week, siding with Radio Free Europe, and the text doubled as a civics lesson about the co-equal branches of government.
He defended the role of the courts in the face of accusations that judges are 'fomenting a constitutional crisis, usurping the Article II powers of the Presidency, undercutting the popular will, or dictating how Executive agencies can and should be run.' He pointed out that the current Congress and president 'enacted a law allocating funds' to Radio Free Europe.
Thus, Lamberth wrote, 'actors within the Executive Branch do not have carte blanche to unilaterally change course, withhold funds that the President and the Legislature jointly agreed to spend, and functionally dismantle an agency that the President and Legislature jointly agreed to support.'
The administration appealed that ruling as well.
'Judge Lamberth has been favorable on all the USAGM cases but the government is still not fully complying,' Voice of America's sidelined press freedom editor Jessica Jerreat told CNN.
Jerreat said Voice of America staffers are stuck 'in a holding pattern' in the meantime — paid by the government but not allowed to report.
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