U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)

The U.S. Agency for Global Media is the federal agency responsible for U.S. civilian international broadcasting. It runs two federal broadcasters, Voice of America (VOA) and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and funds separately incorporated networks that serve audiences abroad. Its chief executive is appointed by the president with Senate confirmation.

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

In October 2026 VOA was broadcasting in eight languages, none of them English, against 49 before March 2025; it resumed posting on VOANews.com on 5 October 2026. Radio Free Asia said in February 2026 that it had resumed Mandarin, Tibetan and Uyghur services to China, with Mandarin initially online only. Alhurra, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks’ television channel, ended its broadcasts in April 2025.

Ownership and governance

USAGM is a federal agency. Its seven-member International Broadcasting Advisory Board consists of six members appointed by the president with Senate confirmation and the secretary of state. The heads of VOA, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and the grantees may be appointed or removed only with the board’s majority approval, and five or more members may remove a network head after consulting the chief executive. Trump dismissed the board’s members after returning to office.

Executive Order 14238 of 14 March 2025 directed USAGM to reduce its statutory functions to “the minimum presence and function required by law”. On 7 March 2026 Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Kari Lake, a senior adviser and later deputy chief executive, had served unlawfully as acting chief executive, and voided the actions she took as acting chief executive or under delegated chief executive authority. On 17 March he vacated the measures that reduced the agency to the statutory minimum and ordered staff back to work; on 31 March the D.C. Circuit stayed the return-to-work order. Sarah B. Rogers, nominated as chief executive in March 2026, appeared at a Senate confirmation hearing on 30 July 2026. Michael Rigas, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, was named in March 2026 to perform the duties of the post.

Source of funding and budget

Congress provided US$652.7 million for FY2026 under P.L. 119-75, signed on 3 February 2026, compared with US$866.9 million in each of FY2024 and FY2025. Of the FY2026 total, US$643.0 million is for international broadcasting operations and US$9.7 million for capital improvements. The administration had requested US$153 million to “support the orderly shutdown of USAGM operations”.

In September 2026 the State Department’s inspector general found that the reductions had “diminished USAGM’s capacity to fulfill its core statutory mission”. Citing July figures in that report, the Washington Post reported that the agency was paying an estimated US$1.6 million a week to keep 420 staff on administrative leave.

Editorial independence

Federal law, 22 U.S.C. 6204(b), requires the secretary of state and the chief executive to “respect the professional independence and integrity” of the agency, its broadcasting services and its grantees. USAGM describes this obligation as its editorial firewall.

In January 2026 NPR reported that Lake had praised Trump as “the president of peace” in a segment on VOA’s Persian service, and that the USAGM executive overseeing the service had urged editors and producers not to book guests who might be critical of Trump. NPR also cited a text exchange in which a VOA Persian journalist told a foreign-policy commentator that management could not allow any critique of the president. Lake told NPR that the story of Iranians’ fight for freedom could not be told without the president’s statements.

On 23 March 2026 four VOA journalists, joined by RSF and PEN America, filed Newhouse v. USAGM. The complaint alleges that management suppressed coverage and required VOA to publish White House talking points nearly word for word. The government has moved to dismiss the case.

AI and digital policy

USAGM’s AI statement commits the agency to “embrace the transformative technology’s promise while avoiding its potential risks” and links an OMB compliance plan dated 30 September 2024. No published editorial AI guidance for VOA or the Office of Cuba Broadcasting was identified.

Classification rationale

USAGM remains 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.

October 2026