Liam Scott worked at Voice of America as a press freedom reporter until, like his colleagues, he was placed on administrative leave in March and later notified that he would be terminated at the end of May.
Several weeks after the Trump administration began gutting Voice of America in March, the news agency is back — except, not really.
A small cohort of Voice of America staffers quietly returned to the Washington office in early May, where they have been tasked with covering the news at a tiny fraction of the agency’s previous capacity.
Instead of 49 languages, the congressionally funded but editorially independent news network is barely publishing in four. And instead of some 1,300 staffers, only about 30 are working.
For those back in the office, the bare-bones return to work has been marked by low morale, confusion amid a perceived lack of leadership, and uncertainty about the future, according to three VOA staffers with knowledge of the situation. They requested anonymity over concerns of retaliation.
With the Trump administration continuing to target VOA and its sister outlets, the atmosphere back in VOA’s headquarters is “grim and confusing,” said one staffer who returned to the office earlier this month.
“People who are in there do not see this as some kind of hopeful return,” they said. “I am angry most of the time I’m in there.”
That anger, the staffer said, is partly due to the sense that the return to work is just for show. “They can’t credibly say that they haven’t shut us down when zero people are working,” the staffer said.
In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that aims to reduce VOA, its sister outlets, and their parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, to their “statutory minimum.” In practice, that has meant these news agencies are fighting for their lives amid the Trump administration’s efforts to cut funding and fire staff.
In VOA’s case, about 1,300 staffers, including the director, have been on paid administrative leave since March. Nearly 600 of those staffers (including me) are set to be terminated at the end of May. Some of them are visa holders whose job loss will put them at risk of being forced to return to countries whose governments have records of imprisoning journalists, like Russia.
Multiple ongoing lawsuits are contesting the administration’s actions, including on the grounds of alleged overreach by the executive branch. On Thursday, the full D.C. Circuit declined to overrule the three-judge panel’s decision to stay a lower court’s preliminary injunction.
USAGM and VOA did not reply to emails requesting comment. But last week, after nearly 600 VOA contractors were notified they were being terminated, USAGM adviser Kari Lake told The Washington Post, “We are in the process of rightsizing the agency and reducing the federal bureaucracy to meet administration priorities.”
“Buckle up,” she added. “There’s more to come.”
Before Trump’s executive order, VOA broadcast in 49 languages to a measured weekly audience of more than 360 million people, many of whom live in some of the world’s most censored countries. Now, a small fraction of the work is being done, and only in Dari, Mandarin Chinese, Pashto and Persian.
VOA’s central, English-language newsroom produces one TV package and a few articles each day, which are then translated and published by the four language services, the three sources said.
“The amount of programming that’s being produced is not a credible replacement for what was on air before,” the first staffer said.
A second source familiar with the situation agreed.
“We were a 24/7 news operation. Now we’re a five-minutes-a-day, five-days-a-week operation,” they said. “We all know that this is not what this place is meant to be doing.”
In many ways, the staffers who have returned have a front-row seat to the downfall of VOA’s decadeslong legacy. But the majority of VOA staffers remain sidelined, on administrative leave. For some of them, not being able to report the news is another type of challenge.
“What’s happening is really as important as anything I’ve ever seen in my career or lifetime, and to not be able to report on it is enormously frustrating,” editor David Futrowsky said. “I think about what was lost, and then separately how it was lost.”
After VOA was silenced in March, press freedom experts voiced concern about the risk of Russian — as well as Chinese and Iranian — propaganda filling the void left by VOA. Leaked cables sent from U.S. embassies and consulates around the world to the State Department echoed those concerns.
At the current reduced capacity, VOA is not publishing in Russian.
Still, the three VOA staffers with knowledge of the situation said that what little content is being published remains independent, fact-based and balanced, as required by VOA’s charter. They added that since the return to work, USAGM has not made any content-related requests. Doing so would constitute a violation of VOA’s firewall.
“Whatever’s going out, we’re going to ensure that it meets the VOA charter,” a third source familiar said.
Earlier this month, Lake — the former local broadcast journalist turned unsuccessful Arizona politician turned USAGM senior adviser — announced that VOA had partnered with the pro-Trump broadcaster One America News. To date, VOA has not broadcast any OAN content, the three sources said.
In March, USAGM canceled VOA’s contracts with news wire services. “With a nearly billion-dollar budget, we should be producing news ourselves,” Lake said at the time.
Hanging over the staffers is the feeling that they’re on borrowed time and will eventually be terminated, they said. “I’m expecting it,” said the second source. “I know it’s going to come.”
But at the same time, the turmoil has brought some of them closer together. There’s a sense that they’re in it together. “There’s a sense of dark humor about everything,” the second source added.
The lack of clear leadership about VOA’s future is among the sources of confusion and uncertainty. “No one’s really in charge,” the first staffer said. VOA director Mike Abramowitz remains on administrative leave.
Although Lake has broken news about VOA and USAGM through posts on X, the three sources said VOA staffers haven’t received any correspondence from her since they returned to the office.
“We haven’t really been told a lot,” said the third source. “I don’t know what the long-term plan is. It would be nice to know.”
That source compared the environment to the TV show “Severance.” “It’s a very quiet newsroom,” they said. “It’s strange.”
On the first floor of VOA’s office, there’s a memorial to journalists from VOA and its sister outlets who were killed while reporting.
Thinking about that memorial is particularly painful, the second source said. “I’m thinking of their family members,” they said, “whose loved ones were lost because of a place that’s now being dismantled.”
