WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday put journalists at Voice of America and other US-funded broadcasters on leave, abruptly freezing decades-old outlets long seen as critical to countering Russian and Chinese information offensives.

Hundreds of staffers at VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other outlets received a weekend email saying they will be barred from their offices and should surrender press passes and office-issued equipment.

Trump, who has already eviscerated the US global aid agency and the Education Department, on Friday issued an executive order listing the US Agency for Global Media as among “elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary.”

Kari Lake, a firebrand Trump supporter put in charge of the media agency after she lost a US Senate bid, said in an email to the outlets that federal grant money “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

The White House said the cuts would ensure “taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda,” marking a dramatic tone shift toward the networks established to extend US influence overseas.

White House press official Harrison Fields wrote “goodbye” on X in 20 languages, a jab at the outlets’ multilingual coverage.

VOA director Michael Abramowitz said he was among 1,300 staffers placed on leave Saturday.

“VOA needs thoughtful reform, and we have made progress in that regard. But today’s action will leave Voice of America unable to carry out its vital mission,” he said on Facebook, noting that its coverage — in 48 languages — reaches 360 million people each week.

“I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” Abramowitz said, adding that it has played an important role “in the fight for freedom and democracy around the world.”

The head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which started broadcasting into the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, called the cancelation of funding “a massive gift to America’s enemies.”
“The Iranian ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years,” its president, Stephen Capus, said in a statement.

US-funded media have reoriented themselves since the end of the Cold War, dropping much of the programming geared toward newly democratic Central and Eastern European countries and focusing on Russia and China.

Chinese state-funded media have expanded their reach sharply over the past decade, including by offering free services to outlets in the developing world that would otherwise pay for Western news agencies.

Radio Free Asia, established in 1996, sees its mission as providing uncensored reporting into countries without free media including China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam.

The outlets have an editorial firewall, with a stated guarantee of independence despite government funding.

The policy has angered some around Trump, who has long railed against media and suggested that government-funded outlets should promote his policies.

The move to end US-funded media is likely to meet challenges, much like Trump’s other sweeping cuts. Congress, not the president, has the constitutional power of the purse and Radio Free Asia in particular has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past.

Advocacy group Reporters Without Borders condemned the decision, saying it “threatens press freedom worldwide and negates 80 years of American history in supporting the free flow of information.”

Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and senior Democratic congresswoman Lois Frankel said in a joint statement that Trump’s move would “cause lasting damage to US efforts to counter propaganda around the world.”

One VOA employee, who requested anonymity, described Saturday’s message as another “perfect example of the chaos and unprepared nature of the process,” with VOA staffers presuming that scheduled programming is off but not told so directly.

A Radio Free Asia employee said: “It’s not just about losing your income. We have staff and contractors who fear for their safety. We have reporters who work under the radar in authoritarian countries in Asia. We have staff in the US who fear deportation if their work visa is no longer valid.”

“Wiping us out with the strike of a pen is just terrible.”

Letpanhla: A Myanmar junta airstrike on a village held by anti-coup fighters killed at least 12 people according to a local administrative official, who said the bombardment targeted civilian areas.
Myanmar's military seized power in a 2021 coup which has plunged the country into a fractious civil war and analysts say the embattled junta is increasingly using air strikes to target civilians.
The Friday afternoon strike hit the village of Letpanhla around 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of the country's second biggest city of Mandalay.
The village in Singu township is held by the People's Defence Forces (PDF) -- anti-coup guerillas who took up arms after the military toppled the country's civilian government four years ago.
"A lot of people were killed because they dropped bombs on crowded areas," said the local administrative official, who asked to remain anonymous. "It happened at the time people were going to the market".
"We're currently making a list and have registered 12 people killed," he said on Saturday.
A junta spokesman could not be reached for comment and AFP could not independently verify the death toll. The local PDF unit reported there had been 27 fatalities.

Wails of grief

Witness Myint Soe, 62, said he tried to hide as an aircraft came in for a bombing run.
"I heard huge bomb blast sounds at the same time I was hiding," he said. "When I came out and looked at the market area I saw it was on fire."
In the aftermath, buildings which appeared to be homes and a restaurant were ablaze, as people in civilian clothing and camouflage uniforms doused the flames with water.
The limp body of a child with a bloody head wound was loaded into the back of an ambulance by a man whose uniform was marked with the PDF insignia.
Wails of grief could be heard as some of the crowd glanced up towards the sky.
Myanmar is now controlled by a patchwork of junta forces, ethnic armed groups and anti-coup partisans.
The number of military air strikes on civilians has risen year on year during the civil war, according to non-profit organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), with nearly 800 in 2024.
That figure was more than triple the previous year and ACLED predicted the junta will continue to rely on air strikes because it is "under increasing military pressure on the ground".
"The military will persevere in its indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilian populated areas in an effort to undermine the opposition's support base and destroy their morale," it said in December.
An offensive by an alliance of armed ethnic groups in late 2023 inflicted stinging territorial losses on the junta.
But analysts say the Myanmar air force, which operates with Russian technical support, has been key to fending off its adversaries based mainly in the borderlands.
More than 3.5 million citizens are currently displaced and half the population lives in poverty.