WASHINGTON -- A US court granted Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's (RFE/RL) request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) in its lawsuit against the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) over the termination of RFE/RL’s congressionally appropriated funding.
The United States District Court in Washington, D.C. said in its ruling on March 25 that the agency likely acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in terminating RFE/RL’s grant and that the actions would cause the broadcaster "irreparable harm" if carried out.
United States District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in the 10-page ruling that the TRO was needed to halt the closure as RFE/RL had shown it is likely to win its case in a court hearing, that allowing the USAGM moves to continue until a court hearing on the fate of RFE/RL's funding would cause "irreparable harm" to the broadcaster, and that issuing the order was in the public interest.
"The leadership of USAGM cannot, with one sentence of reasoning offering virtually no explanation, force RFE/RL to shut down—even if the President has told them to do so," Lamberth explained.
The next step will be a decision on RFE/RL’s request for a preliminary injunction requiring USAGM to provide the approximately $77 million that Congress appropriated for RFE/RL’s activities for the rest of the 2025 fiscal year, which ends September 30. The court is expected to rule on that in the coming weeks.
The threat to the broadcaster’s funding has sparked a wave of global support from media watchdogs, analysts, and democracy advocates, as well as the audiences in the 27 languages and 23 countries in which RFE/RL broadcasts.
Lamberth appeared to acknowledge that in his decision, writing that since 1950 the government has specifically supported RFE/RL as a vehicle for providing “trustworthy, locally relevant news to audiences subject to communist propaganda.”
“We appreciate Judge Lamberth’s thoughtful and airtight ruling to prevent USAGM from ignoring the will of Congress. We look forward to further advancing our case that it’s unconstitutional to deny us the funds that Congress has appropriated to RFE/RL for the rest of the fiscal year," RFE/RL President & CEO Stephen Capus said after the ruling.
"This ruling further sends a strong message to our journalists around the world: Their mission as designed by Congress is a worthy and valuable one and should continue. For 75 years, RFE/RL has been closely aligned with American national security interests by fighting censorship and propaganda in many of the world’s most repressive societies.”
The USAGM claimed to terminate RFE/RL’s grant on March 15, hours after an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump called for the reduction of seven agencies -- including the USAGM -- to “the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
The purported termination of RFE/RL’s grant was communicated in a letter signed by Kari Lake, who listed her title as “Senior Advisor to the (USAGM) Acting CEO with Authorities Delegated by Acting CEO.”
The letter stated “the award no longer effectuates agency priorities.”
It gave no further explanation, and Lamberth said the USAGM had failed to give any further rationale for the move to cut funding during a hearing on March 24.
"The 'explanation' offered by USAGM can scarcely be characterized as an explanation: it amounted to one line in the termination letter stating that “the award no longer effectuates agency priorities,” Lamberth wrote in his ruling.
During the March 24 hearing, the USAGM did say it had taken "immediate administrative steps" to initiate a disbursement of $7.46 million in funds RFE/RL was seeking for the days in March that it operated before Lake's letter was issued.
Abigail Stout, a Justice Department lawyer representing the USAGM, also argued at the hearing that the grant agreement between USAGM and RFE/RL, as stated in the International Broadcasting Act, gives the agency the right to terminate the agreement if RFE/RL fails to comply with the provisions outlined within it.
Lamberth said that the USAGM's demand that RFE/RL use those funds to pay off its financial obligations and not for operations was the "functional equivalent of not receiving them at all."
"RFE/RL would be forced to break lease agreements, terminate employment contracts—thus destroying the credibility RFE/RL has built over decades—and cease all other operations," he wrote.
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Czech Analyst Warns Over Possible RFE/RL Closure
Jiri Pehe, a Czech political analyst and director of New York University's academic center in Prague, was one of those who helped bring RFE/RL from Munich to its current Prague headquarters after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Pehe was a senior adviser to then-President Vaclav Havel when the dissident playwright-turn politician cleared the way for the move.
"If RFE/RL closes, many people in the countries where it operates won’t be able to access alternative news any longer. Of course, people would try to access the kind of information that RFE/RL provides elsewhere, but RFE/RL provides news that at this moment is very important in providing alternatives to official news sources," Pehe told RFE/RL.
"RFE/RL closing would also mark a symbolic full stop that would show that the United States, which until now has led the free world, is no longer interested in fighting for democracy and freedom in those countries where there is no democracy and freedom," he added.
Dozens of US lawmakers on March 25 urged Trump to reverse his executive order to shutter the USAGM. A letter to Trump signed by more than 40 members of Congress said shuttering the agency would also hurt US credibility and global standing around the world.
“More directly, it will leave millions of people in closed and restrictive environments, from Havana to Caracas to Minsk to Tehran, less able to access information about the world around them,” the letter said.
Representative Bill Keating (Democrat-Massachusetts), ranking member of the House Foreign affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe, said RFE/RL, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and other media outlets that are overseen by the USAGM “serve as a vital soft power tools” that enable people in closed societies to gain access to credible and objective information.
“Their work is so powerful that regimes in Iran, Russia, and China have condemned it as a threat to national security,” Keating said in a news release.
Since Lake's letter, readers and listeners from Iran to Belarus, Afghanistan to Russia, Pakistan to Ukraine have swamped social media and other outlets to praise RFE/RL journalists for their brave, impartial, and honest reporting on the front lines of war and in some of the world’s most repressive political and media landscapes -- and expressed concern that it could vanish.
“Sometimes you were like a ray of light that broke through the darkness of lies,” Oleh Prozorov, a reader from Ukraine, wrote on Facebook while thanking RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service for its “protection of political freedoms.”
Lake has been nominated by Trump to take over as head of Voice of America, though her nomination must still be approved by the International Broadcasting Advisory Board (IBAB).
The members of the IBAB, an advisory board established by Congress to oversee the activities of the USAGM, were removed from their positions by the US administration in January and have not been replaced.
Trump, who has taken several moves to slash government spending since taking office for a second term in January, clashed with the USAGM over the content of US-government-funded programming during his first term.
With the future of RFE/RL uncertain, European Union politicians have been looking into the possibility of supporting the broadcaster.
The USAGM is an independent US government agency that oversees the broadcasting of news and information in more than 60 languages to over 400 million people each week.
The total budget request for the USAGM for fiscal year 2025 was $950 million to fund all of its operations and capital investments.
This includes media outlets such as RFE/RL, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio Marti), Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), and the Open Technology Fund.
The 2025 budget request for RFE/RL itself was about $153 million, according to USAGM documents.