Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia see funding cut
Conservatives have been critical of the news services
March
15 (Reuters) - - More than 1,300 Voice of America employees were placed
on leave on Saturday and funding for two U.S. news services that
broadcast to authoritarian regimes was terminated, one day after
President Donald Trump ordered the gutting of the government-funded media outlet's parent and six other federal agencies.
Michael
Abramowitz, Voice of America's director, said nearly his entire staff
of 1,300 journalists, producers and assistants had been put on
administrative leave, crippling a media broadcaster that operates in
almost 50 languages.
Kari Lake is going to clean up the waste in this government media group.
KARI LAKE GOES TO WORK: Exposes Massive Waste at USAGM and Suspends, Locks Out More Than 1,000 Employees at Voice of America
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top
conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine
Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the
Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans
for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit
received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty
Awards.
Kari Lake is already exposing the fraud at the USAGM and how Biden officials tried to hide their misdeeds.
MAGA Firebrand Kari Lake was recently named as the Trump Administration’s senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). This agency oversees Voice of America, the government’s international news network.
Lake is well known across America for competing in two consequential Arizona elections that were fraught with fraud. In both races, she saw her victory ripped away from her following Election Day.
The uber-popular conservative was later named to lead a prominent government organization for President Trump, a field in which she has excelled and has decades of experience.
Lake wassworn into her new positionearlier this month. The Gateway Pundit obtained an email that Lake sent to all agency staff, in which she declared a return to the goal of “working efficiently and honestly to cover this consequential moment in our nation’s history.”
Kari also released a video online describing the waste and fraud she discovered already at the US Agency for Global Media.
Kari Lake:
Hi, America. I’m here in Washington, DC, as Senior Advisor at United States Agency for Global Media. I’m working on behalf of you and President Trump and his administration, and I have been on the job for a couple of weeks now, and I’m horrified by some of the things I’m learning about this agency. I’m sitting here on the 13th floor of a shiny, brand new, beautiful skyscraper building that is costing you, the taxpayer, a fortune. The Biden administration folks who were running this agency before, right before before they left office, signed a brand new lease for this building, a 15-year lease that’s going to cost the taxpayer nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.
Here’s the kicker. They already have a building that they’re located in that is paid off, that they could have renovated or updated, but they chose instead to get us into a lease that’s costing the taxpayer a fortune. I know that every one of you out there is working hard and parting with your tax dollars You’re expecting it to be used wisely, not misused and mismanaged. I can tell you that this building is a colossal waste of money. Take a look at what’s in this building.
Fancy conference rooms with wall-to-wall windows.
There’s There are six conference rooms, at least, that’s what I’ve counted in this building.
There are four bridges to nowhere, massive waterfalls, Italian marble finishes everywhere, leather furnishings, all of this being paid for by American taxpayer. And it’s not the only thing we’ve seen. We are seeing grants where they’ve taken the grants and they’ve changed the contracts just days before we got in here to make it less transparent for us to find out where the money is going and what’s happening with these grantees. It was an obvious, obvious sign that they wanted to keep us from finding out anything that we could possibly go in and change and make better for the American taxpayer. I want you to know I’m hard at work here in Washington, DC. I’m working to make sure that we are not being built out of our hard-earned dollars, and we’re going to make sure we’re doing everything we can to cancel contracts that can be canceled, save money, downsize, and make sure there’s no misuse of your dollars.
And… Kari Lake also locked out more than 1,000 employees at Voice of America.
Journalists showed up at the Voice of America today to broadcast their programs only to be told they had been locked out: Federal officials had embarked on indefinite mass suspensions.
All full-time staffers at the Voice of America and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martí, were affected — more than 1,000 employees. The move followed a late Friday night edict from President Trump that its parent agency, called the U.S. Agency for Global Media, must eliminate all activities that are not required by law.
In addition, under the leadership of Trump appointees, the agency has severed all contracts for the privately incorporated international broadcasters it funds, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
The termination notices for grants for the funded networks, two of which were reviewed by NPR, carried the signature of Trump’s senior adviser Kari Lake, whom he placed at USAGM, not the agency’s acting chief executive. Lake does not appear in her current job to have the statutory authority to carry out that
No comments:
Post a Comment