Blake Britten and Jan Wolf
Washington (Reuters) -Federal Judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration on Monday to suspend the dismissal of hundreds of employees from the agency, which owns the voice of America in the United States, adding that government officials showed “regarding disrespect” to the directives of the court.
The District Judge of the United States Roys Lambert stopped the plan, while he determines whether the American agency for global media agencies, which he issued in April, fulfills that “performs its authorized mandate, which VOA serves as a constant reliable and authoritative source of news”.
Dismissions will affect 532 workplaces for staff, presenting the majority of the remaining employees of the agency. In March, VOA broadcasts were suddenly closed by order of US President Donald Trump.
Lambert said in his written manner that he “no longer has any doubts” that the defendants, which include the agency and his acting General Director Kari Lake, “lacks the plan in accordance with the preliminary court prohibition.”
Instead, they “ran out for the clock for the financial year, remaining in violation of even the most meager reading of USAGM and the vote of America's authorized obligations,” he said.
Representatives of the White House and the Agency, as well as the lawyers of the employees who submitted the trial, did not immediately respond to requests for the commenting of the decision.
Trump, who was faced with VOA during his first period, chose a lake, a former leading news to become its director for his second. The watering can, the convinced ally of the president, often accused the fixed assets of the media of evading bias against Trump.
According to the USAGM report, VOA, founded in 1942, to counteract Nazi propaganda, VOA reached 360 million people a week a week.
Lambert, who was appointed President Ronald Reagan, heard many trials that challenge the legality of the march of Trump. Cases include the one that Michael Abramovitz, Director of VOA.
(Reporting Blake Britten and Yana Wolf in Washington; editing Edwina Gibbs)
