There is a particular species of national folly that consists not in being defeated by one’s enemies but in disarming oneself. On Monday, four veteran Voice of America journalists — joined by PEN America and Reporters Without Borders — filed a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that Kari Lake and the U.S. Agency for Global Media have committed precisely this act: transforming the most consequential soft-power broadcasting apparatus on earth into a partisan loudspeaker during the most consequential military engagement in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The complaint, Newhouse v. USAGM, is not merely a press-freedom case. It is an indictment of strategic incompetence.
The plaintiffs — former acting VOA news director Barry Newhouse, South and Central Asia division director Ayesha Tanzeem, Korean-language service chief Dong Hyuk Lee, and Russian-service journalist Ksenia Turkova, the latter designated a foreign agent by the Putin regime — allege that under Lake’s stewardship, the Voice of America’s remaining broadcasts have ceased to function as independent journalism and have instead become vehicles for administration talking points, according to NPR. Lead attorney Norm Eisen told NPR that VOA has been “breaching the Constitutional and statutory rules that require that outlet not to push propaganda or censorship.” The plaintiffs declared in a joint statement that “the integrity of VOA’s content is not just a legal requirement — it is in the national interest.”
Let us be precise about what is at stake. The Voice of America was born in the fires of the Second World War, broadcasting factual accounts of the fight against the Axis powers into Nazi-occupied Europe. As NPR reported, it included Allied setbacks and defeats alongside victories — not out of masochism but out of strategic calculation, because credibility is the precondition of influence. During the Cold War, the United States expanded VOA as a demonstration of soft power, modeling what journalism looked like in a pluralistic democracy. Until Lake’s overhaul, VOA reached 361 million people weekly across 49 language services in more than 100 countries, according to court filings cited by NPR. That number had been slashed to six language services by early 2026.
The lawsuit’s most damning allegations concern VOA’s Persian-language service — the very instrument through which the United States ought to be speaking directly to the Iranian people during a shooting war. According to the Associated Press, the complaint alleges that coverage of the Iran war sent into that country has not included news of death tolls from U.S. air strikes or perspectives of leaders outside the administration, while the bombing of an elementary school was “barely mentioned.” The Hill reported that the plaintiffs accused Lake and acting USAGM CEO Michael Rigas of censoring interviews, video footage, and stories about anti-government protests within Iran and completely banning reporting on certain elements of the Iranian opposition from the Persian service.
The figure at the center of these allegations is Ali Javanmardi, the USAGM executive now overseeing the Persian, Kurdish, and Afghan services. According to the federal complaint reviewed by NPR, Javanmardi spoke directly to the camera in several reports, identifying the interest of the Iranian public with Trump’s agenda and telling Iranians to continue protesting in the streets — segments that appeared to be news coverage rather than clearly identified editorials conveying official U.S. policy. As The Hill reported earlier this year, VOA staffers alleged that Javanmardi was excluding coverage of exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, silencing guests from discussing Pahlavi, and muting audio of protesters chanting his name. The court filing itself reveals that on January 16, 2026, Javanmardi sent a directive to all Persian Service staff requiring that all guest appearances “must be approved by me in advance.”
A USAGM spokesperson told The Hill in response to the lawsuit that “American taxpayers fund USAGM and Voice of America, and those funds by law must support broadcasting that reflects U.S. policy and the interests of the American people.” The agency separately stated that it is “responsible for oversight of its networks, including Voice of America, and for ensuring compliance with the VOA charter, which requires authoritative, accurate journalism that is reflective of and clearly presents U.S. policies.” This is, to put it charitably, a careful selection of statutory language. The same charter mandates editorial independence, and Congress erected a statutory firewall — a set of legal protections specifically designed to shield VOA’s editorial decisions from political interference by any administration, of any party.
The broader context magnifies the folly. As NPR reported, Lake had previously canceled VOA’s contracts with the Associated Press and Reuters and negotiated a deal to carry reports from the right-wing One American News Network, though such content had not yet aired. She placed more than 1,000 employees on paid administrative leave following President Trump’s March 2025 executive order directing that the agency be reduced to its minimum legal footprint. On March 7, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that Lake had unlawfully assumed the powers of USAGM’s chief executive and declared her actions legally void, according to NPR. On March 17, he ordered all 1,042 sidelined full-time employees back to work, ruling that Lake’s efforts to dismantle VOA were, in his words, “arbitrary and capricious.” The administration has said it will appeal.
Here is the national interest argument, stated without equivocation: The Voice of America is not a luxury. It is not a jobs program. It is not a public broadcasting vanity project. It is one of the most strategically valuable instruments the United States possesses for projecting influence into closed societies — and it derives that value entirely from credibility. The moment VOA ceases to be credible, it ceases to be useful. A VOA that functions as a partisan megaphone is not merely an embarrassment; it is a strategic weapon turned against itself, because it validates every accusation that hostile regimes — from Tehran to Beijing to Moscow — have leveled for decades: that American media is simply the propaganda arm of whoever holds power in Washington.
The Iran war makes this case with devastating clarity. Jewish Insider reported that the editorial constraints and massive cuts to VOA’s reporters not only “decimated the Iran division” but also “politicized it at a time when it is more important than ever for the United States to be speaking directly to the Iranians.” Jamie Fly, former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and now chief executive of Freedom House, told Jewish Insider that under current management, USAGM “seems to be doing everything possible to ensure that President Trump’s messages to the Iranian people are not heard, and in some cases, directly contradicted.” Columbia Journalism Review observed that Lake blocked Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from using USAGM’s own transmission equipment, forcing Radio Farda, its Persian-language service, to rent from commercial contractors to broadcast into Iran during the protests.
Consider the absurdity: The United States is engaged in military operations against the Iranian regime while simultaneously crippling the broadcasting infrastructure designed to reach the Iranian people with accurate information. Congress appropriated $653 million for USAGM, as Poynter reported — roughly 25 percent less than the prior year, but still a substantial investment in soft power. That investment is being squandered not by a foreign adversary’s jamming but by the internal politicization of the very broadcasts that money was intended to produce.
The lawsuit, filed by a coalition represented by the Democracy Defenders Fund, the Government Accountability Project, and the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, seeks relief from viewpoint discrimination and nominal damages. David Schulz of the Yale clinic stated that the administration’s “efforts to replace the reporting of facts it dislikes with political propaganda that extols the President must not stand.” The Government Accountability Project’s David Z. Seide noted that a similar lawsuit was brought and won at the end of Trump’s first administration against a prior appointee’s attempt to weaponize VOA.
This newspaper takes no position on the wisdom of the Iran campaign itself; that is a separate question for a separate day. But no serious analysis of American national interest can support the proposition that gutting VOA’s credibility during wartime advances the strategic objectives of the United States. The plaintiffs in Newhouse v. USAGM have said what should be obvious: “Allowing that legacy to be compromised from within serves no one — least of all the United States.” The Voice of America was built to speak the truth into the darkest corners of the world, not because truth is comfortable, but because truth is the weapon authoritarian regimes fear most. If the United States turns that weapon into a mirror of the propaganda it was designed to counter, then it has not merely failed its journalists — it has failed the national interest that gives those journalists their mission.