U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)

The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors before its 2018 rebranding, is the U.S. federal agency overseeing U.S. civilian international broadcasting. As of June 2026, USAGM continues to exist as a legal federal agency, but with severely reduced and legally contested operations, frozen and contested grant funding to its non-federal grantees, and a leadership arrangement that was ruled unlawful by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth on 7 March 2026, alongside separate court orders finding or restraining unlawful aspects of the dismantling and funding-withholding effort that followed President Donald Trump’s 14 March 2025 executive order directing the administration to “dismantle USAGM to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law”. The cycle’s developments have reshaped USAGM from a once-arm’s-length federal broadcasting agency with a bipartisan editorial firewall into an institution operating under direct White House political direction with much of its broadcasting capacity in legal limbo.

Media assets

• Voice of America (VOA): federal entity within USAGM, providing news in dozens of languages to a previously reported global audience of around 280 million people
• Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL): independent non-profit grantee, providing content in 27 languages across 23 countries in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and South Asia (including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan)
• Radio Free Asia (RFA): independent non-profit grantee headquartered in Washington, DC, broadcasting to six Asian countries
• Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN): independent non-profit grantee, operating the Alhurra television networks, Sawa radio, and Arabic-language digital news portals serving 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa
• Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB): federal entity within USAGM operating Radio and Television Martí from Miami, Florida
• Open Technology Fund (OTF): separate non-profit organisation funded through USAGM that supports internet-freedom tools, with statutory protections that have been litigated separately from the main agency dismantling

State Media Matrix typology

State-Controlled (SC), classification preserved from the August 2025 SMM baseline that reclassified USAGM from Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM) to SC. The 2025/26 cycle’s developments, including the continuation of the dismantling effort, the de facto installation of Kari Lake as acting Chief Executive Officer in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and the Constitution’s Appointments Clause as ruled by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth on 7 March 2026, the closure, suspension or severe downsizing of many language services, and the May 2026 Reporters Without Borders downgrading of the United States to its lowest-ever position in the World Press Freedom Index, consolidate rather than weaken the institutional pressure factors that led to the SC reclassification in 2025.

Ownership and governance

USAGM directly operates two federal entities, VOA and OCB, and provides USAGM-administered congressional grants to three independent non-profit corporations, RFE/RL, RFA and MBN. VOA began broadcasting in 1942 during the Second World War; the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 later provided a statutory framework for U.S. international information activities and was amended in 2013 to relax restrictions on domestic access to USAGM programming. The International Broadcasting Act of 1994 unified U.S. international broadcasters under a single agency, and the VOA Charter, drafted in 1960 and enacted in 1976, mandates accurate, objective and comprehensive representation of U.S. policies and a balanced range of American opinion. Congressional oversight rests with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, with funding determined annually by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.

The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2017 abolished the previous nine-member bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors and replaced it with a presidentially appointed Chief Executive Officer confirmed by the Senate, with the prior board reduced to a purely advisory body now known as the International Broadcasting Advisory Board (up to six presidentially appointed members confirmed by the Senate plus the Secretary of State ex officio). The 2017 reform concentrated previously distributed governance authority in a single political appointee, a structural feature that has been central to the agency’s vulnerability to executive-branch political pressure across both the first Pack episode in 2020 and the more sweeping 2025/26 dismantling effort.

The 2025/26 cycle’s leadership history has been exceptionally turbulent. Catherine Amanda Bennett, the Senate-confirmed CEO since September 2022, resigned ahead of the January 2025 Trump inauguration. President Trump in January 2025 nominated conservative media executive L. Brent Bozell III as CEO; the nomination was subsequently withdrawn, with Bozell instead nominated as U.S. Ambassador to South Africa and confirmed to that post on 18 December 2025. Victor Morales was designated acting CEO from February 2025, with Kari Lake, formerly a Republican gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidate in Arizona, appointed Senior Advisor to the Acting CEO on 4 March 2025. Lake exercised self-described acting CEO authority from 31 July to 19 November 2025; Judge Lamberth ruled on 7 March 2026 that this service violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and the Appointments Clause and that actions taken during that period were void, including a 29 August 2025 reduction-in-force that had eliminated more than 500 positions across USAGM. Five days later, on 12 March 2026, the President nominated Sarah B. Rogers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, as USAGM CEO; designated Michael Rigas, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, as acting CEO pending Rogers’s Senate confirmation; and Lake said she would remain at USAGM in a deputy or senior role while the administration pursued the new nomination. Lake was also nominated as U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica during the same period. The Rogers nomination had not received Senate confirmation by the close of this review period. VOA Director Michael Abramowitz, sidelined and put on administrative leave during the 2025 dismantling, remained on leave at the close of the review period.

Source of funding and budget

USAGM is wholly funded by congressional appropriations administered through the State Department, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) appropriations bill. Until FY 2025, the agency had operated on roughly stable funding of approximately US$830 million in FY 2023 to US$922 million in FY 2025, with the grantee broadcasters (RFE/RL, RFA, MBN) collectively receiving more than US$370 million annually through USAGM-administered grants.

The 2025/26 cycle’s funding history has been defined by the executive branch’s effort to defund USAGM and Congress’s repeated rejection of that effort. The Trump administration’s FY 2026 Congressional Budget Justification, submitted in July 2025, requested only US$153 million in new budget authority “to support the orderly shutdown of USAGM operations”. This is the lowest USAGM budget request in the agency’s history and would have constituted an effective wind-down rather than an operating appropriation. Congress rejected the proposed wind-down. The State Department, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act for FY 2026 (Public Law 119-75), signed by President Trump on 3 February 2026, provided approximately US$653 million for USAGM, down from roughly US$867 million in each of the previous two years, but still about US$500 million above the administration’s US$153 million shutdown request. Reporters Without Borders characterised the appropriation as a roughly 25 per cent cut from prior-year levels but as “a strong message that Lake must end her efforts to erode USAGM and let the journalists do their jobs”.

The funding flow to grantee broadcasters has been subject to extensive litigation. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on 1 May 2025 granted a temporary administrative stay of district court rulings that had ordered restoration of Congressionally appropriated funds to RFE/RL, RFA and MBN. Court orders subsequently produced a shifting and contested funding picture, with some injunctions requiring payment of appropriated funds, temporary appellate stays, and later rulings or appropriations restoring funding in part. The 7 March 2026 Lamberth ruling voiding Lake’s actions has provided further legal basis for the continued resumption of grantee funding under the FY 2026 appropriation.

Editorial independence

USAGM is structured around two statutory editorial-independence safeguards: the VOA Charter (which mandates accuracy, objectivity, comprehensiveness and balanced representation of American opinion in VOA programming) and the editorial firewall provision of the International Broadcasting Act of 1994 (which prohibits direct U.S. government interference in editorial content). The 2025/26 cycle has tested both safeguards under unprecedented executive-branch pressure.

The mass administrative leave of VOA journalists and grantee staff in March 2025, the September 2025 district court order pausing further mass layoffs and finding agency noncompliance with statutory obligations, the September 2025 district court order requiring Lake to reverse VOA layoffs and keep journalists on payroll, Lake’s subsequent decision to keep journalists on furlough rather than allow them to report, the 29 August 2025 reduction-in-force eliminating more than 500 positions (subsequently voided by the Lamberth ruling), the RFA layoffs of May 2025 followed by its suspension of remaining news production in October 2025 amid continued funding uncertainty, and Lake’s stated objective of reducing USAGM “to zero” and transferring its functions to the State Department, together constitute what Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have characterised as the systematic undermining of the statutory firewall, not through overt censorship of individual content but through resource starvation and personnel control. The Trump administration has responded to court rulings against the dismantling by maintaining, through White House spokesperson Anna Kelly, that the administration’s actions to “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse” at VOA constitute “a tremendous success” and that the litigation will not be the “final say on the matter”.

The broader U.S. press-freedom environment in which USAGM operates has deteriorated materially during the cycle. In its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked the United States 64th of 180 countries, a fall of seven places from 57th in 2025 and the United States’ lowest-ever position in the Index. RSF North America Director Clayton Weimers characterised President Trump as “pouring gasoline on the fire” of a decade-long American press-freedom decline, and specifically identified the USAGM workforce reductions and the closure, suspension and downsizing of VOA, RFE/RL and RFA as contributing factors to the United States’ historic fall in the rankings.

AI and digital policy

USAGM and its broadcasters do not maintain a centralised public-facing AI policy comparable to those of CBC/Radio-Canada, the BBC or similar peer public-service broadcasters. Individual networks have historically operated under their own newsroom standards, with disclosure norms varying by service. At national level, the second Trump administration shifted federal AI policy toward deregulation and accelerated adoption, with emphasis on competitiveness and national security rather than public-service-media AI governance. The May 2025 Cabinet reshuffle did not create a U.S. equivalent of the new ministerial AI portfolios established in some peer democracies during the same period. No public-sector generative AI framework specific to U.S. international broadcasting has been promulgated, and no USAGM-specific public AI or content-provenance policy was identified in this review.

Classification rationale

USAGM remains classified as State-Controlled (SC) for the 2026 cycle. The agency retains statutory editorial-independence safeguards on paper, including the VOA Charter and the International Broadcasting Act firewall, but the 2025/26 cycle demonstrated that those safeguards were not sufficient to prevent operational executive control.

On ownership and governance, USAGM is a U.S. federal agency directly accountable to the executive branch through a presidentially appointed Chief Executive Officer with expansive statutory authority over both the federal broadcasters (VOA, OCB) and the budget allocations to the non-profit grantees (RFE/RL, RFA, MBN). The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act reform that abolished the previous bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors and concentrated authority in a single political appointee removed the principal structural protection against politically driven editorial pressure. The 2025/26 cycle’s leadership history, including the unlawful exercise of acting CEO authority by Lake from 31 July to 19 November 2025 as ruled by the Lamberth decision, illustrates the consequences of that concentrated structure under a Presidential administration that has explicitly stated the objective of dismantling the agency.

On funding, USAGM depends entirely on annual congressional appropriations administered through the executive branch. The March 2025 executive order directed USAGM to reduce non-statutory functions to the maximum extent permitted by law; agency leadership placed large numbers of VOA employees on administrative leave, attempted deep reductions in force, froze or contested grant funding to non-federal broadcasters, and proposed a FY 2026 budget of only US$153 million for an orderly shutdown. The FY 2026 congressional appropriation of approximately US$653 million, although well above the executive request, still represents a roughly 25 per cent reduction from the previous two years’ levels of around US$867 million, and the executive branch’s demonstrated willingness to freeze and rescind appropriated grant funding remains a continuing operational risk for the grantee broadcasters.

On editorial independence, the statutory firewall established by the International Broadcasting Act of 1994 and the VOA Charter mandate of accuracy and balance remain in law but have been substantively eroded in practice during the cycle. The sustained administrative-leave campaign against VOA journalists, the closure, suspension or severe downsizing of many language services across VOA, RFE/RL and RFA, the politically aligned senior appointments, and the explicit administration objective of integrating USAGM functions into the State Department, together represent a pattern of operationalised executive control that distinguishes USAGM from ISF and ISFM peer broadcasters where institutional firewalls have remained substantively intact under political pressure.

Judge Lamberth’s March 2026 ruling that Kari Lake’s acting leadership was unlawful and voided her actions, together with the February 2026 congressional appropriation of roughly US$653 million, shows that legal and congressional resistance remained significant during the cycle. But the operational reality of the review period was one of executive-driven dismantling, funding interference and severe disruption of editorial capacity. The SC classification therefore remains justified for 2026, while future reclassification would require durable restoration of arm’s-length governance, protected funding flows and operational independence for VOA and the grantee networks.

June 2026