In the wake of steep funding cuts initiated by President Donald Trump, news organizations affiliated with the U.S. Agency for Global Media are asking Congress and the courts to intervene so that they can continue reporting.
Hundreds of journalists’ jobs are in jeopardy. Radio Free Asia placed more than 200 staff on an indefinite furlough Friday, and Middle East Broadcast Networks will furlough roughly 400 employees for two weeks starting Sunday. Both organizations, along with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, are private nonprofits that receive virtually all of their funding from federal grants approved by Congress. USAGM terminated those grants Saturday following an executive order from Trump.
To fight the cuts, the USAGM-funded outlets and their supporters are lobbying Congress and raising public awareness of their work’s importance. All three are editorially independent and seek to provide accurate news to audiences in countries that lack a free press. They are also pursuing legal recourse and exploring alternative funding sources.
USAGM’s media entities “provide a clear-eyed understanding” of what is happening in the communities they cover, said Katherine Jacobsen, the U.S., Canada and Caribbean program coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit that promotes press freedom. Their reporting is a fact-based, reliable alternative to the disinformation and propaganda campaigns that authoritarian regimes regularly perpetuate.
“That really allows for a more democratic society to develop,” Jacobsen said. After Trump announced the cuts, state-run media in autocratic countries like Russia and China celebrated.
The outlets’ status as independent nonprofits has so far allowed them to avoid the fate of USAGM’s other media entities, Voice of America and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting. Those two are a part of USAGM, and thus part of the federal government, and they stopped broadcasting after Trump ordered that USAGM reduce activities not required by law “to the maximum extent.” More than 1,300 employees at Voice of America and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting were placed on leave.
Meanwhile, journalists at Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Middle East Broadcast Networks have continued reporting while executives try to solve their funding crises.
On Tuesday, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sued USAGM in federal court, arguing that the agency is “doing nothing short of defying Congress” by refusing to disburse the funding Congress had already approved. Middle East Broadcast Networks is planning on filing a lawsuit “as soon as possible,” according to Middle East Broadcast Networks president and CEO Jeffrey Gedmin, and Radio Free Asia spokesperson Rohit Mahajan told Reuters that the outlet is also preparing legal action.
“We believe that the termination of our grant was both politically problematic and unlawful,” Gedmin said. “Politically problematic because it conflicts with congressional intent and unlawful because the only way by law to terminate our agreement would be through material breach of agreement.”
The grant terminations come at a time when Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency are making sweeping cuts to the federal government, purportedly to eliminate excess spending. In reality, their reductions have been haphazard, and many have been challenged in court.
A statement posted on USAGM’s website after the cuts called the agency “a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer” and appeared to refer to efforts to maintain its media organizations’ editorial independence as “Trump-proofing.” In his first term, Trump repeatedly attacked the agency’s outlets for coverage critical of him.
USAGM did not respond to a request for comment.
The outlets have also been talking to members of Congress, who have signaled support on both sides of the aisle, Gedmin said, but many of them have been “overwhelmed” by the multitude of cuts and changes the Trump administration has made to other parts of the federal government.
“I think members of Congress right now are terribly distracted and have been on their back heel because so much is coming at them so fast,” Gedmin said.
On Wednesday, a coalition of 27 journalism groups, including the Pulitzer Center and the Society of Professional Journalists, published an open letter calling on Congress to protect the reporters affected by the USAGM cuts. In the letter, the journalism groups stress that many of the reporters at USAGM’s media entities “face significant personal risk” due to their work covering authoritarian regimes.
“For more than 80 years, USAGM entities … have played a vital role in reaching audiences living under authoritarian governments, empowering free expression in some of the world’s most dangerous reporting environments,” the letter reads. “Eliminating these organizations is a significant blow to press freedom — and a gift to autocrats worldwide.”
Currently, at least nine journalists who work for USAGM’s media organizations have been jailed by foreign governments for their reporting, said Clayton Weimers, the executive director of Reporters Without Borders’ U.S. branch, which signed onto the letter. The recent funding cuts could jeopardize efforts to free them.
Another area of concern is foreign journalists at USAGM with U.S. work visas, Weimers said. If those journalists lose their jobs and their visas, they may be forced to leave the country. Many of them come from authoritarian countries and returning would put them at risk of reprisal from those nations’ governments.
In its lawsuit, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty notes that without funding, it cannot pay for security services or cybersecurity defense tools for its journalists. Some have previously been targeted by terrorist organizations, criminal elements and hostile governments.
“There are a number of places where people are or may feel compelled to return to where they’re a lot less safe than they were last Friday night,” Gedmin said. He estimated that Middle East Broadcast Networks has roughly 50 to 60 U.S.-based staff on work visas. “We Americans have an immense responsibility. This isn’t just employer-employee. This is a pact that is in many ways unwritten, that requires a good degree of decency and responsibility.
“We’re not there yet, but we’re very close to breaking that, and that would be tragic and disgraceful.”
Because Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Middle East Broadcast Networks are private nonprofits, they theoretically could accept funding from other entities to try and sustain their operations. The Czech Republic, where Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty maintains one of its headquarters, is leading an initiative to keep the network afloat. At least 10 other European Union nations have expressed support for the initiative.
Time is running out, however. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s lawsuit notes that it has already had to “significantly scale back its operations.” It has multiple payments coming up, including one due April 1.
“If RFE/RL is not funded, it will be forced to terminate its contracts with freelance journalists and lay off a substantial portion of its employees in April 2025,” the lawsuit reads.
At the Middle East Broadcast Networks, the upcoming two-week furlough of U.S.-based employees is expected to save $1 million and hopefully buy the organization some time while its legal challenge processes through the courts, Gedmin said. Workers will still have health insurance during the furlough.
Radio Free Asia is using furloughs in a similar manner, Reuters reported. The outlet is prioritizing exempting workers dependent on visas who would be vulnerable to persecution if they were to return to their home countries.
Trump’s executive order gutting USAGM notes that the decision is part of a larger effort to reduce “federal bureaucracy.” But supporters of the affected outlets argue that they provide immense benefits in return for their relatively small costs. Middle East Broadcast Networks’ budget, for example, is less than the cost of two Apache helicopters, Gedmin said. The organization was already in the midst of downsizing when USAGM terminated its grants.
Eliminating the work USAGM outlets do in authoritarian nations would create a vacuum in the media space that could be filled with state propaganda from those regimes, Weimers said.
“The amount of money that the United States invests in these organizations is really small compared to the huge benefit that we get from a world that is more stable, more accountable, less corrupt, less aggressive.”
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