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Trump says Kari Lake will lead Voice of America. He attacked it during his first term
Kari Lake, pictured at the Republican National Convention in July, is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Voice of America.
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President-elect Donald Trump says Kari Lake, a local television news anchor-turned-MAGA politician, will lead the federally funded broadcaster Voice of America.
If successful, the move would put a loyalist at the helm of a news outlet that Trump sought to bring to heel under his appointee during the final year of his first term. Trump officials sought to strip the network and its parent agency of their independence during his first term, including actions later found to be illegal and in one case, unconstitutional.
But Trump doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally install Lake; the hire is dependent on a bipartisan board beneath the chief executive of its parent agency.
Voice of America (VOA), which is funded by Congress, operates in nearly 50 languages and reaches an estimated 354 million people weekly across the globe. It is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the government agency that oversees all non-military, U.S. international broadcasting.
Trump said Wednesday on Truth Social that Lake will be appointed by and work closely with the incoming head of that agency, “who I will announce soon.”
A free press is central to VOA’s mission: It aims to bring unfettered reporting to places that do not have it, and show political debate and dissent in the U.S. even when that reflects critically on the administration in power.
Trump’s White House took the unprecedented step in spring 2020 of openly attacking VOA in public statements over its perceived failures to explicitly blame the Chinese government for the pandemic.
On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Lake and his as-yet-unnamed agency leader will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”
Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for an Arizona U.S. Senate seat this year and for governor in 2022, has made a political name for herself in part by denying election losses (both hers and Trump’s in 2020) and railing against the mainstream media, of which she was once a part.
She left her job at the Phoenix Fox affiliate in 2021 after over two decades and a series of controversies, including sharing COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic.
In her speech at the Republican National Convention this summer, Lake accused the “fake news” of spending “the last eight years lying about President Donald Trump and his amazing, patriotic supporters,” and said they had “worn out your welcome.”
On Wednesday, Lake said she looks forward to starting at VOA, which she described as a “vital international media outlet dedicated to advancing the interests of the United States by engaging directly with people across the globe and promoting democracy and truth.”
“Under my leadership, the VOA will excel in its mission: chronicling America’s achievements worldwide,” Lake tweeted.
That’s not exactly the organization’s stated mission, however. On its website, it says it is “committed to providing comprehensive coverage of the news and telling audiences the truth.”
What is Voice of America?
VOA was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda in Germany.
“We bring you Voices from America,” said announcer William Harlan Hale in the first German-language program. “Today, and daily from now on, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good for us. The news may be bad. But we shall tell you the truth.”
By the end of World War II, it was broadcasting 3,200 programs in 40 languages every week, presenting America — and modeling a free press — to the world.
VOA was able to continue and even expand its operations during the Cold War. And when the United States Information Agency was established in 1953, VOA became its largest element.
Today, its over 2,000 employees produce radio, digital and television content, distributed by a network of satellite, cable, FM and MW and some 3,500 affiliate stations.
VOA calls itself the largest U.S. international broadcaster; others include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Martí.
The Voice of America building stands in Washington, D.C.
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Andrew Harnik/AP
Is VOA editorially independent?
From its beginning, government officials debated the balance VOA should strike between reporting the news and furthering U.S. foreign policy. Over the years, the broadcaster has taken several steps to safeguard its editorial independence, in practice and in policy.
In the late 1950s, VOA employees drafted a formal statement of principles to protect the editorial integrity of their broadcasts, which became the official VOA Charter in 1960. President Gerald Ford signed it into law in 1976 .
There are three main guidelines: VOA news will be “accurate, objective and comprehensive;” “represent America, not any single segment of American society” and cover not only U.S. policies but “responsible discussions and opinion” about them.
Taking a step further, the 1994 U.S. International Broadcasting Act enshrined in U.S. code a “firewall” that prohibits any U.S. government official from interfering in the objective, independent reporting of news.
“The firewall ensures that VOA can make the final decisions on what stories to cover, and how they are covered,” the broadcaster says.
That firewall came under threat during the first Trump administration, as NPR has reported.
What happened to VOA during Trump’s first term?
Despite the VOA being owned by the federal government, the White House singled it out for attack during the first Trump administration, particularly during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020.
The White House accused the broadcaster of amplifying Chinese government propaganda about the country’s efforts to contain the virus, which it denied.
It was in that context that the Republican-led Senate finally confirmed conservative filmmaker Michael Pack to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, two years after Trump first nominated him.
Pack’s arrival rattled VOA even before he got there: Two top officials resigned as soon as he was confirmed.
Further fueling fears of political interference, Pack quickly stripped most of the agency’s senior leadership of their authority and fired the chiefs of the government-sponsored broadcast networks for foreign audiences, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
“My job really is to drain the swamp, to root out corruption and to deal with these issues of bias, not to tell journalists what to report,” Pack told the pro-Trump website The Federalist at the time.
Throughout his seven-month tenure at VOA’s parent agency, Pack faced multiple accusations of meddling in its process — from making personnel moves like reassigning VOA leaders and refusing to extend foreign employees’ work visas, to editorial decisions like removing several controversial stories from its website after publication.
Under Pack’s leadership, the agency also investigated one of its own VOA White House reporters for perceived anti-Trump bias and rescinded the firewall meant to ensure editorial independence from partisan interference.
A formal federal investigation also said Pack engaged in “waste or gross waste of government resources” in paying a private firm $1.6 million to investigate agency executives he considered insufficiently loyal (they were ultimately exonerated). Such work is ordinarily done by government attorneys.
The Biden administration swiftly removed several Trump loyalists from the U.S. Agency for Global Media and VOA itself after taking office in 2021. A federal inquiry released in 2023 found that Pack repeatedly engaged in abuses of power and gross mismanagement — including, but not limited to, violating journalists’ independence. A federal judge found that Pack had violated constitutional free speech protections of the network’s journalists.
Is Lake’s leadership a sure thing?
The chaos of the Pack era led to congressional reform — most notably, the creation of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board (IBAB).
The IBAB is an independent federal entity made up of seven people: six experts in mass communications and international affairs, appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and a seat for the secretary of state. No more than three of the president’s appointees can be from the same political party.
The Senate confirmed its six new members last December.
The board’s stated mission is to ensure the editorial independence and enhance the impact of the work carried out by the U.S Agency for Global Media. It also plays a role in the appointment and removal of heads of the agency’s entities.
The heads of VOA and others “may only be appointed or removed if such action has been approved by the Board,” according to its bylaws.
Notably, VOA welcomed a new director — former Freedom House president and longtime Washington Post reporter and editor Michael
Abramowitz — in June.
It’s not clear when or whether the board would meet to decide to replace Abramowitz. Trump has not yet said whom he intends to appoint to lead the parent U.S. Agency for Global Media, a position that requires Senate confirmation.
The board has not yet responded to NPR’s request for comment.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., takes questions at a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday.
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J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Speaker Mike Johnson, R.-La., is forging ahead with his latest proposal to renew a key American spy power. His bill, revealed Thursday, is largely unchanged from a previous plan which failed in a series of overnight votes earlier this month.
The program at center of the debate, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), is set to expire on April 30.
FISA 702 allows U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside of the United States. Some of the nearly 350,000 foreign targets whose communications are collected under the provision are in touch with Americans, whose calls, texts and emails could end up in the trove of information available to the federal government for review.
For almost two decades, privacy-minded lawmakers from both parties have sought to require specific court approval before federal law enforcement can conduct a targeted review of an American’s information gathered through the program. The lack of any such warrant requirement helped sink an effort last week to extend the program for 18 months, as well as a separate vote on a five-year renewal.
Trump officials, like those in past administrations, have argued that such a warrant requirement would overburden law enforcement and endanger national security. Johnson’s latest proposal would reauthorize the program for three years, but does not include a warrant requirement. Instead, the bill calls for the FBI to submit monthly explanations for reviews of Americans’ information to an oversight official as well as criminal penalties for willful abuse, among other tweaks.
“I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country,” the president wrote on Truth Social last week, advocating for the program to be extended without changes. “I have spoken with many in our Military who say FISA is necessary in order to protect our Troops overseas, as well as our people here at home, from the threat of Foreign Terror Attacks. It has already prevented MANY such Attacks, and it is very important that it remain in full force and effect.”
Glenn Gerstell, who served as general counsel at the National Security Agency during the Obama and first Trump administration, says Johnson’s reforms look like an attempt to find a middle ground.
“There’s not a lot of really substantive changes to the statute, but some gestures are made to people who are worried about privacy and civil liberties,” Gerstell said. “It seems like a pretty reasonable compromise that is going to be satisfactory to the national security agencies and yet at the same time represents some gesture to the privacy advocates.”
“This is not a reform bill and it’s not a compromise,” Elizabeth Goitein, a privacy advocate and senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, wrote on X. “It’s a straight reauthorization with eight pages of words that serve no serious purpose other than to try to convince members that it’s NOT a straight reauthorization.”
A bipartisan reform deal is still out of reach
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, told NPR on Wednesday, before the release of Johnson’s new proposal, that lawmakers were working on a bipartisan solution. He said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., was in touch with Johnson on the issue.
“There’s a lot of work being done here,” Himes said. “We’re sort of working out a process that will be inclusive rather than exclusive.” Himes said he was negotiating with Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional law scholar, on a reform proposal they hoped could preserve and reform the program — reauthorizing it with bipartisan support.
But Johnson’s new bill appears to fall short of the inclusive approach Himes hoped for.
NPR obtained a memo written by Raskin to his colleagues urging them to oppose the bill, which he said “continues the disastrous policy of trusting the FBI to self-police and self-report its abuses of Section 702 and backdoor searches of Americans’ data.”
“FBI agents can still collect, search, and review Americans’ communications without any review from a judge,” Raskin wrote.
FBI agents must receive annual training on FISA and are generally barred from searching for information about people in the U.S. if the goal of the search is to investigate general criminal activity, rather than find foreign intelligence information, and those searches need approval from a supervisor or an attorney.
Republican hardliners — who sunk Johnson’s last reauthorization attempt — also don’t all appear to be on board for Johnson’s latest revision. Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a past chair of the Freedom Caucus, said “we’re not there yet” in a video he shared to X on Thursday.
“I didn’t take an oath to defend FISA, I didn’t take an oath to defend the intelligence community,” Perry said. “We can’t have them spying on American citizens and, when they do, there has to be accountability and I haven’t seen any that I’m satisfied with yet.”
The House Rules committee meets Monday morning, the first step toward advancing the renewal bill toward a vote.
President Trump announced a three-week extension of a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon that had been set to expire in a few days, after hosting a meeting between Israeli and Lebanese diplomats at the White House on Thursday.
Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that has been attacking Israel from southern Lebanon, did not have representatives at the meeting and did not immediately comment on the announcement. The prime minister of Israel and the president of Lebanon also did not comment.
A successful peace agreement would hinge upon Hezbollah halting attacks, which Lebanon’s government has little power to enforce because it does not control the militia. Lebanon’s military has mostly stayed out of the fighting and is not at war with Israel.
The cease-fire, which was scheduled to end on April 26, would last until May 17 if it takes effect as Mr. Trump described it. Before the cease-fire was brokered last week, nearly 2,300 people were killed in Lebanon and 13 in Israel. Since then, the number of Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah attacks have been dramatically reduced, though the two sides have continued exchanging fire.
The Lebanese Ambassador to the United States, Nada Hamadeh, credited Mr. Trump for extending the cease-fire, saying that “with your help and support, we can make Lebanon great again.” Mr. Trump replied, “I like that phrase, it’s a good phrase.”
Asked about the potential of a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, Mr. Trump said that “I think there’s a great chance. They are friends about the same things and they are enemies on the same things.”
But Lebanon and Israel have periodically been at war since Israel’s founding in 1948. Israel has invaded Lebanon for the fifth time since 1978, incursions that have destabilized the country and the delicate balance of power between Muslim, Christian and Druze communities.
In the hours before the president’s announcement on social media, Israel and Hezbollah were trading attacks in southern Lebanon, testing the existing cease-fire.
Mr. Trump said the meeting at the White House had been attended by high-ranking U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. ambassadors to Israel and Lebanon.
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli strike near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh killed three people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Hezbollah claimed three separate attacks on Israeli troops who are occupying southern Lebanon, though none were wounded or killed.
Hezbollah set off the latest round of fighting last month by attacking Israel soon after the start of the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran. Israel responded to Hezbollah’s attacks by launching airstrikes across Lebanon and widening a ground invasion of the country’s south.
Smoke rises from Port of La Guaira in Venezuela on Jan. 3, 2026 after U.S. forces seized the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
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Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment against a U.S. Army soldier, accusing him of using his insider knowledge of the clandestine military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January to reap more than $400,000 in profits on the popular prediction market site Polymarket.
The Justice Department says Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, who was stationed at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, was part of the team that planned and carried out the predawn raid in Caracas earlier this year that resulted in the apprehension of Maduro.
The Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed the actions against Van Dyke, the first time U.S. officials have leveled criminal charges against someone over prediction market wagers.
According to the indictment, Van Dyke now faces counts of wire fraud, commodities fraud, misusing non-public government information and other charges.
Trading under numerous usernames including “Burdensome-Mix,” Van Dyke allegedly traded about $32,000 on the arrest of Maduro, resulting in profits exceeding $400,000.
“Prediction markets are not a haven for using misappropriated confidential or classified information for personal gain,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York. “Those entrusted to safeguard our nation’s secrets have a duty to protect them and our armed service members, and not to use that information for personal financial gain.”
Van Dyke’s defense lawyer is not yet publicly known. Polymarket did not return a request for comment.
The charges against Van Dyke come at a sensitive time for the prediction market industry, which has been growing exponentially, despite calls in Washington and among state leaders for the sites to be reined in.
Van Dyke is the first to be charged in the U.S. for suspected Polymarket insider trading, but Israeli authorities in February arrested several people and charged two on suspicion of using classified information to place bets about military operations in Iran on Polymarket.
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