Trump freezes funding for Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe

(Patria) - The administration of President Donald Trump on Saturday sent journalists from Voice of America and other U.S.-funded broadcasters on leave, abruptly blocking media outlets long considered important for countering Russian and Chinese information offensives.

Hundreds of journalists and staff at Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other outlets received an email over the weekend stating they would be barred from entering offices and must surrender press passes, office phones and other equipment.

Trump, who has already curtailed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Education, issued an executive order on Friday listing the U.S. Agency for Global Media among "elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary," AFP reported.

Kari Lake, a fervent Trump supporter and former Arizona news anchor who was appointed to lead the media agency after losing a U.S. Senate race, wrote in an email to the media outlets she oversees that federal grant money "no longer serves the agency's priorities."

White House Press Secretary Harrison Fields took a much less legalistic tone in a post on social media platform X, simply writing "goodbye" in twenty languages, sarcastically referencing Voice of America's multilingual reporting.

The head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which began broadcasting in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, called the funding cut "a massive gift to America's enemies."

A gift to China?

"Iranian ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years," said its president, Stephen Capus, in a statement.

"Handing victory to our adversaries would make them stronger and America weaker," Capus said.

U.S.-funded media have reoriented since the end of the Cold War, abandoning much of the programming aimed at new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and focusing on Russia and China.

Radio Free Asia, founded in 1996, sees its mission as providing uncensored reporting in countries without free media, including China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam.

The outlets have an editorial firewall, with a stated guarantee of independence despite funding from the U.S. government.

This policy has angered some around Trump, who has long criticized the media and, during his first term, suggested that U.S.-government-funded media should promote his policies.