Washington
Judge suspends administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of Voice of America jobs
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Monday to temporarily suspend the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of jobs at the agency that oversees Voice of America, the government-funded broadcaster founded to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., ruled that the U.S. Agency for Global Media cannot implement a reduction in force eliminating 532 jobs for full-time government employees on Tuesday. Those employees represent the vast majority of its remaining staff.
Kari Lake, the agency’s acting CEO, announced in late August that the job cuts would take effect Tuesday. But the judge’s ruling preserves the status quo at the agency until he rules on a plaintiffs’ underlying motion to block the reduction in force.
Lamberth previously ruled that President Donald Trump’s Republican administration must restore VOA programming to levels commensurate with its statutory mandate to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” He also blocked Lake from removing Michael Abramowitz as VOA’s director.
Lamberth accused the administration of showing “concerning disrespect” toward the court in response to his earlier orders to produce information about its plans for Voice of America. He noted that the agency initiated the job cuts only hours after a hearing last month in which government lawyers said a reduction in force, or RIF, was merely a possibility.
“The defendants’ obfuscation of this Court’s request for information regarding whether their RIF plans comported with the preliminary injunction has wasted precious judicial time and resources and readily support contempt proceedings,” Lamberth wrote.
But he said he wouldn’t initiate contempt proceedings on his own because the plaintiffs haven’t sought it yet.
Employees who sued to block the dismantling of Voice of America claimed the planned cuts would hamper the judge’s ability to enforce the injunction he issued in April. “This Court should therefore preserve the status quo while the parties litigate compliance,” their attorneys wrote.
Government lawyers accused the plaintiffs of impermissibly trying to micromanage the agency’s operations. “Enjoining the reductions in force would be a wholly overbroad and improper remedy,” they wrote.
Lamberth, a senior judge, was nominated to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media also houses Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. The networks, which together reach an estimated 427 million people, date to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism.
Congress appropriated $875 million to the agency for fiscal year 2025 and required that $260 million of the funds must be spent by VOA.
In March, Trump signed an executive order called for the agency to reduce its “statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.” A day later, VOA stopped broadcasting for the first time in 83 years. The agency placed almost all of its full-time employees on administrative leave.
In announcing the job cuts on social media last month, Lake said the agency “will continue to fulfill its statutory mission ... and will likely improve its ability to function.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Georgina Yeomans argued Monday that the cuts would cement the agency’s programming at deficient levels that don’t comply with the judge’s orders. Yeomans said it’s unclear who at the agency is making key decisions, such as which jobs to eliminate.
“We simply do not know,” she said.
California
YouTube to pay $24.5 million to settle lawsuit over Trump’s account suspension after Jan. 6 attack
Google’s YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit President Donald Trump brought after the video site suspended his account following the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol following the election that resulted in him leaving the White House for four years.
The settlement of the more than four-year-old case earmarks $22 million for Trump to contribute to the Trust for the National Mall and a construction of a White House ballroom, according to court documents filed Monday. The remaining $2.5 million will be paid to other parties involved in the case, including the writer Naomi Wolf and the American Conservative Union.
Alphabet, the parent of Google, is the third major technology company to settle a volley of lawsuits that Trump brought for what he alleged had unfairly muzzled him after his first term as president ended in January 2021. He filed similar cases Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Twitter before it was bought by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022 and rebranded as X.
Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle Trumps’ lawsuit over his 2021 suspension from Facebook and X agreed to settle the lawsuit that Trump brought against Twitter for $10 million. When the lawsuits against Meta. Twitter and YouTube were filed, legal experts predicted Trump had little chance of prevailing.
After buying Twitter for $44.5 billion, Musk later became major contributor to Trump’s successful 2024 campaign that resulted in his re-election and then spent several months leading a cost-cutting effort that purged thousands of workers from the federal government payroll before the two had a bitter falling out. Both
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among the tech leaders who lined up behind Trump during his second inauguration in January in a show of solidarity that was widely interpreted as a sign of the industry’s intention to work more closely with the president than during his first administration.
ABC News, meanwhile, agreed to pay $15 million in December toward Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. And in July, Paramount decided to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit regarding editing at CBS’ storied “60 Minutes” news program.
The settlement does not constitute an admission of liability, the filing says. Google confirmed the settlement but declined to comment beyond it.
Google declined to comment on the reasons for the settlement., but Trump’s YouTube account has been restored since 2023. The settlement is will barely dent Alphabet, which has a market value of nearly $3 trillion — an increase of about $600 billion, or 25%, since Trump’s return to the White House.
The disclosure of the settlement came a week before a scheduled Oct. 6 court hearing to discuss the case with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers.
Judge suspends administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of Voice of America jobs
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Monday to temporarily suspend the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of jobs at the agency that oversees Voice of America, the government-funded broadcaster founded to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., ruled that the U.S. Agency for Global Media cannot implement a reduction in force eliminating 532 jobs for full-time government employees on Tuesday. Those employees represent the vast majority of its remaining staff.
Kari Lake, the agency’s acting CEO, announced in late August that the job cuts would take effect Tuesday. But the judge’s ruling preserves the status quo at the agency until he rules on a plaintiffs’ underlying motion to block the reduction in force.
Lamberth previously ruled that President Donald Trump’s Republican administration must restore VOA programming to levels commensurate with its statutory mandate to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” He also blocked Lake from removing Michael Abramowitz as VOA’s director.
Lamberth accused the administration of showing “concerning disrespect” toward the court in response to his earlier orders to produce information about its plans for Voice of America. He noted that the agency initiated the job cuts only hours after a hearing last month in which government lawyers said a reduction in force, or RIF, was merely a possibility.
“The defendants’ obfuscation of this Court’s request for information regarding whether their RIF plans comported with the preliminary injunction has wasted precious judicial time and resources and readily support contempt proceedings,” Lamberth wrote.
But he said he wouldn’t initiate contempt proceedings on his own because the plaintiffs haven’t sought it yet.
Employees who sued to block the dismantling of Voice of America claimed the planned cuts would hamper the judge’s ability to enforce the injunction he issued in April. “This Court should therefore preserve the status quo while the parties litigate compliance,” their attorneys wrote.
Government lawyers accused the plaintiffs of impermissibly trying to micromanage the agency’s operations. “Enjoining the reductions in force would be a wholly overbroad and improper remedy,” they wrote.
Lamberth, a senior judge, was nominated to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media also houses Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. The networks, which together reach an estimated 427 million people, date to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism.
Congress appropriated $875 million to the agency for fiscal year 2025 and required that $260 million of the funds must be spent by VOA.
In March, Trump signed an executive order called for the agency to reduce its “statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.” A day later, VOA stopped broadcasting for the first time in 83 years. The agency placed almost all of its full-time employees on administrative leave.
In announcing the job cuts on social media last month, Lake said the agency “will continue to fulfill its statutory mission ... and will likely improve its ability to function.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Georgina Yeomans argued Monday that the cuts would cement the agency’s programming at deficient levels that don’t comply with the judge’s orders. Yeomans said it’s unclear who at the agency is making key decisions, such as which jobs to eliminate.
“We simply do not know,” she said.
California
YouTube to pay $24.5 million to settle lawsuit over Trump’s account suspension after Jan. 6 attack
Google’s YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit President Donald Trump brought after the video site suspended his account following the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol following the election that resulted in him leaving the White House for four years.
The settlement of the more than four-year-old case earmarks $22 million for Trump to contribute to the Trust for the National Mall and a construction of a White House ballroom, according to court documents filed Monday. The remaining $2.5 million will be paid to other parties involved in the case, including the writer Naomi Wolf and the American Conservative Union.
Alphabet, the parent of Google, is the third major technology company to settle a volley of lawsuits that Trump brought for what he alleged had unfairly muzzled him after his first term as president ended in January 2021. He filed similar cases Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Twitter before it was bought by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022 and rebranded as X.
Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle Trumps’ lawsuit over his 2021 suspension from Facebook and X agreed to settle the lawsuit that Trump brought against Twitter for $10 million. When the lawsuits against Meta. Twitter and YouTube were filed, legal experts predicted Trump had little chance of prevailing.
After buying Twitter for $44.5 billion, Musk later became major contributor to Trump’s successful 2024 campaign that resulted in his re-election and then spent several months leading a cost-cutting effort that purged thousands of workers from the federal government payroll before the two had a bitter falling out. Both
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among the tech leaders who lined up behind Trump during his second inauguration in January in a show of solidarity that was widely interpreted as a sign of the industry’s intention to work more closely with the president than during his first administration.
ABC News, meanwhile, agreed to pay $15 million in December toward Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. And in July, Paramount decided to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit regarding editing at CBS’ storied “60 Minutes” news program.
The settlement does not constitute an admission of liability, the filing says. Google confirmed the settlement but declined to comment beyond it.
Google declined to comment on the reasons for the settlement., but Trump’s YouTube account has been restored since 2023. The settlement is will barely dent Alphabet, which has a market value of nearly $3 trillion — an increase of about $600 billion, or 25%, since Trump’s return to the White House.
The disclosure of the settlement came a week before a scheduled Oct. 6 court hearing to discuss the case with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers.
