Kari Lake was frustrated. The former TV news star and Arizona political candidate had in recent weeks vented to allies that she was still not in the leading position at Voice of America, despite being picked for the role as one of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken and loyal surrogates, though she had been named a special adviser at VOA’s parent company.
“I want people to know that I’m not in the director position at Voice of America,” Lake said in an interview on Newsmax last week. She distanced herself from VOA’s website, from the “egregious or outrageous” work of the “Trump-proofed” agency that houses it and from the MAGA criticism swirling a day after an Oval Office dustup with Trump and a VOA journalist.
Now it’s unclear if she’ll ever get anything approaching that kind of government power.
In just a little over two weeks since she began her advisory role, Lake has seen the agency she was slated to oversee go into revolt. She has seen the near-shuttering of the United States Agency for Global Media, which has a congressionally allocated billion-dollar budget and houses VOA. About 1,300 journalists and support staff have been placed on paid administrative leave, with few signs that many or any will be welcomed back. USAGM has said it’s terminating grants to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, affecting thousands more staff. And Lake has faced accusations that the intended teardown of USAGM — made official by the White House in an executive order Friday — has ceded America’s own story to foreign adversaries and their propaganda machines.
Mike Abramowitz, the current VOA director now on administrative leave, called it a “self-inflicted blow” in his first on-camera comments since Trump’s decision.
“It’s an incredibly important tool for basic combating Chinese, Russian, Iranian disinformation, for telling the truth to people living in tyranny,” he said of VOA to CBS News on Monday.
White House officials told NOTUS that they think VOA will continue in some form — just likely scaled down. What they described was a far cry from the VOA first established in 1942 to combat Nazi propaganda and which now, alongside its related companies, reaches hundreds of millions across the globe and transmits in over 40 languages, according to the network.
“There’s a tug of war going on, but there’s always been a struggle for the soul of VOA since the end of World War II about, and shouldn’t be,” a veteran VOA correspondent told NOTUS hours before Trump signed the executive order. “Probably by the time you write this piece and get it published, we’ll have a better indication of which direction it might be going in.”
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Lake has become the face of this most recent and perhaps final tug of war over the fate of VOA.
Trump’s transition team announced in early December that Lake would be appointed as director of VOA, after she was discussed for more high-profile positions like ambassador to Mexico or a prominent agency press secretary. Lake, according to one ally, has since conveyed frustration at not being placed in a more visible role, especially after she’s spent much of the last four years boosting Trump around the country and pushing his false claims that he won the 2020 presidential race.
Steve Bannon, a fervent Trump ally and VOA critic who has cheered its dismantling, said he pushed very hard for Lake to get her role. “She is perfect casting,” he told NOTUS.
But multiple people close to Lake or who spoke with her before she began her role said her initial posture was to reform the network. “She was eager to come in and learn everything,” one former official said.
A few former employees who spoke with NOTUS before the executive order was signed shared tepid optimism that she could be the one thing that stood in the way of Elon Musk or other critics who have pushed to kill the agency outright, in part because of comments she made during the Conservative Political Action Conference last month.
“I believe it is worth trying to save,” Lake said of VOA in late February. “With a relatively small budget, along with honest reporting, we can spread the values of freedom all over the world and prevent trillion-dollar wars.”
There were even rumors that Lake might get her own TV show (despite VOA not broadcasting in the U.S.), making a full dismantling more unlikely.
Lake denied anything said about her, her experience or VOA for this story. “Every single one of those statements is garbage,” she said in a text responding to questions.
Lake’s elevation has stalled out to the point where events have outpaced her ascension. Lake and her allies claim that existing Biden appointees at both the USAGM and VOA “Trump-proofed” the agency, making it impossible for her to take control — and thus required her to be installed as senior adviser.
Former and current employees of both VOA and its parent company dispute that. In fact, they say it was Congress, which in 2020 passed a law to limit the power of USAGM’s CEO, who is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The seven-person board, which governs USAGM and officially selects VOA’s director, also must be confirmed by the Senate, creating a seven-person waiting list until the director role could be filled, in part because the seventh and tie-breaking vote of the board is the administration’s secretary of state.
Though the White House has sent an official nomination notice for L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative media critic, to lead USAGM, a hearing has yet to be scheduled. And the Senate Foreign Affairs subcommittee did not respond to NOTUS about the administration’s moves on VOA.
But if the Trump administration wanted to expedite Lake’s appointment, two veteran employees said, they would not have fired the board — creating a backlog of necessary nominations.
“Why would you blow up the [board] if you wanted to have a glide path for Kari Lake?” the veteran correspondent asked.
Biden also fired the previous board in 2021 and his VOA director Abramowitz was not in position until 2024. Amanda Bennett, Biden’s director to USAGM, wasn’t confirmed by the Senate until Sept. 2022, almost a year after she was officially nominated.
“The same disgruntled former employees of VOA and USAG who are leaking false narratives about Kari Lake and Brent Bozell are exactly why President Trump took decisive action to defund these so-called news outlets,” White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said in response to questions for this story. “His goal is to bring about the significant changes that only Kari and Brent can achieve.”
As a senior adviser, Lake has amped up her public bashing of VOA. Using her X account, Lake has amplified the cuts made at the agency, taking credit for cancelling contracts of wire services like the Associated Press and defunding grantees, including Radio Free Asia. She’s documented her efforts to break a lease for a new building, which former VOA staff said was vital to get them out of their almost dilapidated one. The intended new building is not equipped to broadcast, but people close to the decision to sign the lease defended it, arguing that it would have saved taxpayer money in the long run.
“I’m so appalled by what I’ve seen here. I’m glad the president is acting, and we are going to follow that executive order to a T,” Lake said on MAGA-architect Bannon’s podcast on Monday. In DOGE-like style, she’s promised to make the receipts available going forward: “There’s too much rot in this agency to salvage it.”
Journalists at VOA and USAGM had expected heavy cuts, according to two former VOA journalists. In fact, rumors circulated among VOA staff that there would be a reduction-in-force announced last Friday, after about 20 probationary employees were walked out of the buildings, following DOGE cuts the week before. And beta-testing for the new building to identify issues, negotiated by the union, had been paused — heightening concerns regarding an incoming slash. One longtime correspondent Steve Herman was put on an “excused absence” after criticizing Trump last month, and articles criticizing Trump were watered down or removed all together, according to a press freedom writer now on administrative leave. But few VOA employees, if any, expected a devastation like this.
Employees and contractors alike received an email Saturday morning informing them that they were being put on paid leave, and they were then swiftly locked out of access to their work emails and other programs, according to two VOA staffers now on leave. Tales that people showed up to work only to have their badges taken have circulated around Washington and the globe, causing supporters of the network to slam the administration and say it was attacking press freedom.
Lake’s posture has clearly changed to match Trump’s new plans.
To account for Lake’s transition, a person close to her said once inside, she “took a look at the books” and saw that reform was not possible.
She repeated as much to her ally Bannon this week.
“I started doing my research, and the more I unpeeled the onion, the more corruption I found,” Lake said on Bannon’s “War Room.” “And so on day one, I brought a couple of DOGE folks in, and we added to the team, and we have an incredible attorney with us as well.”
Lake appeared to be referencing Mora Namdar, a fierce VOA critic and lawyer who wrote a chapter in Project 2025 that said VOA should be put fully under the president’s control or shut down completely. One official now on leave told NOTUS that DOGE staff have been spotted at both USAGM buildings since inauguration.
Some in — or now formerly in — VOA fully blame Trump for the agency’s disintegration. The president last week lashed out after an Oval Office spat with a VOA journalist, putting the organization back on his radar. He’s long harbored contempt for VOA, due to what he and his allies believe has been a pattern of anti-Trump coverage. One White House official denied the executive order was retaliation rather than the actualization of policies Trump campaigned on.
“This shouldn’t be a surprise,” said the official.
Now, the path forward for VOA and its affiliated agencies is unclear. Under the executive order signed Friday, agency heads are required to submit plans for complying with the order to the Office of Management and Budget within seven days. And already the lawsuits have begun, with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty filing suit against USAGM to block their termination of the federal grant, naming Lake and the acting CEO Victor Morales. Lake predicted that legal action would come.
“It’s going to happen. They probably worked all weekend,” Lake told Bannon of their political enemies eager to sue. “I hope they didn’t get any sleep.”
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Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS. Reese Gorman and Daniella Diaz contributed reporting.