A federal judge on Saturday voided layoffs at Voice of America and ruled that Kari Lake unlawfully ran the U.S. Agency for Global Media, finding that her authority over the agency violated both the Constitution's appointments clause and the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Lake's actions after becoming acting CEO are void, including the elimination of USAGM staff carried out in August. He also invalidated actions that the acting CEO Victor Morales had delegated to Lake.
The ruling is a legal setback, but it's also a window into a broader fight over who gets to reshape the federal government and how fast they can do it.
The mechanics of this case matter. When President Trump nominated Lake in February 2025 to serve as senior adviser to acting CEO Victor Morales, the arrangement quickly expanded. Morales designated Lake to perform the functions and responsibilities specified for 19 out of the 22 duties assigned to the CEO. By July, Lake was made acting CEO, as The Hill reports.
Judge Lamberth saw through the architecture:
"The Court finds that these expansive delegations were an unlawful effort to transform Lake into the CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media in all but name."
The judge wrote that Lake "exercised control over the agency during the period relevant to the motions." In his view, accepting the government's argument on the first assistantship question would set a dangerous precedent. It would, as he wrote, "require the Court to find that the President can fill a first assistantship at any time during a vacancy in a Senate-confirmed office."
That's the core legal issue. The appointments clause exists for a reason: Senate-confirmed positions require Senate confirmation. Workarounds that hand someone 19 of 22 duties while avoiding that process will draw judicial scrutiny, and here, they did.
Lake said she "strongly" disagreed with the ruling and will appeal. She framed the dispute as a fight between democratic mandates and judicial overreach:
"The American people gave President Trump a mandate to cut bloated bureaucracy, eliminate waste, and restore accountability to government."
"An activist judge is trying to stand in the way of those efforts at USAGM."
She had defended the layoffs last summer, describing the process as scaling down staff by more than 500 employees. Her philosophy was blunt: "Sometimes a lean, mean team makes it easier to get things done."
There's nothing wrong with that instinct. The federal bureaucracy is bloated, USAGM included. Taxpayer-funded international broadcasting has long been a magnet for the kind of institutional inertia that resists reform by reflex. The desire to cut is sound. The question is always whether the mechanism holds up in court.
This is not the first time the layoffs hit a wall. A federal judge blocked them in December, and Saturday's ruling deepened the legal trouble by attacking not just the layoffs themselves but the authority of the person who ordered them.
The lawsuit was filed last year by VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, along with fellow plaintiffs Kate Neeper and Jessica Jerreat. In a statement to Politico, they said they feel "vindicated" and called the ruling "a powerful step toward undoing the damage." They added:
"Even as we work through what this ruling means for colleagues harmed by her actions, it brings renewed hope and momentum to the next phase of our fight: restoring VOA's global operations and ensuring we continue to produce journalism, not propaganda."
That last line deserves a raised eyebrow. VOA's own record on producing "journalism, not propaganda" is, charitably, mixed. The agency has spent decades operating in the gray space between independent reporting and government messaging, and the staff who claim to defend editorial independence have not always distinguished themselves from the institutional orthodoxy they serve. Wanting to keep your job is understandable. Wrapping it in the language of press freedom is a choice.
The ruling landed one day after Ahmad Batebi, a prominent Iranian dissident, human rights activist, and VOA journalist, was fired over efforts to limit coverage of Iran's exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. That detail adds a layer of complexity to the narrative. Restructuring an agency is one thing. Firing a dissident journalist over editorial disputes about Iran coverage raises different questions entirely.
President Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 to reshape the agency. The goal of making USAGM leaner and more accountable is a legitimate one. International broadcasting funded by American taxpayers should serve American interests, and decades of bureaucratic drift have not always produced that result.
But the appointments clause is not a suggestion. It's a constitutional requirement. If the administration wants to install leadership at USAGM with the authority to restructure the agency, the path runs through the Senate. Shortcuts that delegate 19 of 22 CEO duties to someone without confirmation invite exactly the kind of ruling Lamberth delivered.
The appeal will test whether courts see the delegation arrangement as a procedural technicality or a structural violation. Lake's team clearly believes the former. Lamberth ruled it was the latter.
Reforming the federal bureaucracy is necessary work. Doing it in a way that survives judicial review is what makes the reform stick.
