Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has contested the termination of US federal grants by suing the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and officials.
RFE/RL said USAGM’s decision to terminate federal grants the Congress appropriated for the media is unlawful.
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The filing, submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday, named USAGM and the agency’s officials, Kari Lake and Victor Morales, as defendants.
“That agency is now refusing to disburse the appropriated funds on the basis that it is ending its ‘non-statutory’ functions. But funding Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a statutory function of the United States Agency for Global Media,” the filing says.
“Whether to disburse funds as directed by appropriations laws, and whether to make those funds available through grants as directed by the International Broadcasting Act, is not an optional choice for the agency to make. It is the law. Urgent relief is needed to compel the agency to follow the law,” it adds.
US President Donald Trump on Friday issued an executive order listing the USAGM as among “elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary,” putting journalists at Voice of America (VOA) and other US-funded broadcasters, including RFE/RL, on leave.
VOA and RFE/RL are some of the leading independent media outlets that provide independent news to people in countries with restricted media.
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Lake, a firebrand Trump supporter and former Arizona news anchor – who was put in charge of RFE/RL after she lost a US Senate bid – wrote in an email to the media outlets she supervises that federal grant money “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”
More than 1,300 journalists, producers, and staff at VOA were placed on administrative leave after Trump signed the executive order.
Russian propagandists have hailed Trump’s decision to terminate funding to VOA and RFE/RL, calling independent journalists “vile, disgusting traitors to the Motherland” during a broadcast on Russian television.
Stephen Capus, RFE/RL president and CEO, has likened Trump’s decision to “[ceding] terrain to the propaganda and censorship of America’s adversaries.”
“This is not the time to cede terrain to the propaganda and censorship of America’s adversaries. We believe the law is on our side and that the celebration of our demise by despots around the world is premature,” Capus said, according to the media’s press release.
Trump has long railed against media and, in his first stint in office, had suggested that US government-funded outlets should promote his policies.
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