Conservative Judge Saves VOA, Savages SCOTUS

Do. Your. Damn. Job.

Another day, another old bull of the judiciary rearing his grizzled (okay bald) head to shame the Trump administration and its enablers at the Supreme Court. This time it’s Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court in DC stamping the ground and snorting in disgust at the government’s efforts to dismantle Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Voice of America (VOA), and the entire media network that broadcast accurate news and US soft power across the globe for three generations now.

Judge Lamberth issued a temporary restraining order directing the Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to give RFE/RL the $142 million allocated to it by Congress for FY 2024. He also used the occasion to read the Trump administration for filth, or, as he put it, “to briefly address some ideas and tropes that have been percolating in the national media for the last few months.”

The court reminded the president that he himself signed the budget resolution on March 15, including the part about funding RFE/RL and the other media outlets, and so he doesn’t get to just steal the funding and say, “LOL, suck it, losers.” (Rough paraphrase.)

In short: The current Congress and President Trump enacted a law allocating funds to the plaintiffs. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, actors within the Executive Branch do not have carte blanche to unilaterally change course, withhold funds that the President and the Legislature jointly agreed to spend, and functionally dismantle an agency that the President and Legislature jointly agreed to support.

The VOA case

On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order purporting to shut down USAGM and the subagencies “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law,” and “reducing the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”

Then he barreled right through the “applicable law” part, informing RFE/RL on March 15 that it was terminating the grant enshrined in the very congressional budget resolution he signed that day. (Technically the notice came from Kari Lake, the perennial losing candidate from Arizona who is inexplicably heading up USAGM.) The effort to shiv the agencies resulted in at least three lawsuits, all of which wound up on the docket of Judge Lamberth, a Reagan appointee who has been on the bench since 1985.

Lamberth is no one’s idea of a liberal squish. He previously entertained two years-long fishing expeditions by the conservative smear shop Judicial Watch — one involving Bill and Hillary Clinton’s legal defense fund, and the other into Hillary’s BUT HER EMAILS. But he’s deeply incensed by the administration’s conduct here, and, unlike some of his judicial brethren, willing to do something about it.

Lamberth scoffed at the government’s claim that it spent ten whole minutes thinking about it and reached the reasoned conclusion that canceling all contracts at VOA, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, firing most of their employees, and shutting down their programming, amounted to reducing the agencies to their “statutory minimum.” He granted the requested preliminary injunction, ordering USAGM to “return USAGM employees and contractors to their status prior to the March 14, 2025 Executive Order” and “restore the FY 2025 grants with USAGM Networks Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks such that international USAGM outlets can ‘provide news which is consistently reliable and authoritative, accurate, objective, and comprehensive’” in accordance with the statute.

The RFE/RL case proceeded on a slightly different track thanks to the government’s effort to appear to be working in good faith to resolve the issue. (It wasn’t.)

RFE/RL

Under the International Broadcasting Act, RFE/RL and its sister agencies are funded on annual basis through a congressional allocation administered by USAGM. In February, USAGM and RFE/RL finalized the terms of a FY 2025 Master Grant Agreement, which RFE/RL duly signed and returned. USAGM agreed to countersign, but never did, instead purporting to terminate the grant entirely on March 15.

After a court order, USAGM released the the funding for March, but produced a new, amended Master Grant Agreement with several terms that were both unacceptable and illegal as a precondition of future funding. To wit, USAGM wants the power to name board members to RFE/RL, an authority specifically removed by Congress in 2023. That amendment was a direct result of Trump’s attack on USAGM during his first term, when he put a right-wing loon named Michael Pack in charge of the place. In a scathing report, the Office of Special Counsel described Pack’s tenure as plagued by “gross mismanagement” and “abuse of authority.” Perhaps it’s unsurprising that one of the first things Trump did after being sworn in a second time was to fire the Special Counsel, the official tasked with investigating whistleblower reports.

Now USAGM seeks to defy the clear dictate of Congress, while simultaneously ignoring the instruction of 22 U.S.C. § 6204(d) to “respect the professional independence and integrity of” RFE/RL. It demanded authority to delete whole sections of the agency with just 14 days notice, and deem RFE/RL in default if it failed to comply. RFE/RL argued that this was simply a poison pill, crafted either to delay the TRO because the parties are “negotiating,” or, in the event RFE/RL signed the thing, make default inevitable, giving USAGM grounds to shut it down.

Judge Lamberth agreed that “turning a blind eye to the defendants’ delay tactics would be a naïve conclusion, allowing the agency to indefinitely evade judicial review.”

He also found that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge the refusal to disburse money that rightly belongs to RFE/RL.

“This course of action upends the longstanding relationship between the parties and disregards RFE/RL’s significant reliance interests, sounding the death knell for RFE/RL—a 75-year-old, statutorily created, congressionally funded entity,” he wrote. “The Court concludes that this action is, at the very least, arbitrary and capricious.”

This stands in marked contrast to the behavior of several other federal judges in DC — lookin’ at you, Our Favorite Beryl! — who were unable to persuade themselves that employees or officers at various independent agencies had standing to sue when Trump aimed his cannon at them. Only Judge Loren Alikhan roused herself to save the Inter-American Foundation from the depredations of the DOGE bros, reasoning that the officers had cause to demand immediate relief because “Reinstatement matters little if the officer of a government organization returns to a pile of rubble.”

“An organization can only survive so many rounds of missed payments, broken contracts, and lost employees before it is gone for good,” Judge Lamberth agreed. “RFE/RL need not wait until it has crossed that threshold to be deserving of preliminary injunctive relief.”

And now the filth

But Judge Lamberth wasn’t done.

He noted that “people from both inside and outside government” have loudly and publicly accused federal judges of “fomenting a constitutional crisis, usurping the Article II powers of the Presidency, undercutting the popular will, or dictating how Executive agencies can and should be run.”

“The subtext, if not the headline, of these accusations is that federal judges are motivated by personal political agendas,” he went on.

LOOKIN’ AT YOU, PAM BONDI!

“These circulating notions reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the federal judiciary, and indeed of the Constitution itself,” Judge Lamberth scolded. “So the Court will take this opportunity to clear up some of the misconceptions that are now unfortunately permeating the national mediascape.”

Then he launched into an abbreviated chorus of Schoolhouse Rock, explaining that Congress makes laws, including the budget, and the president signs them. So if people are mad about millions of dollars going to RFE/RL or VOA, they can email their congressional representatives.

Judge Lamberth finished with what can only be read as a subtweet of his feckless, cowardly colleagues, particularly the ones at One First Street.

By enjoining the defendants’ efforts to dismantle the plaintiff networks, actions which I perceive to be contrary to the law, I am humbly fulfilling my small part in this very constitutional paradigm, a framework that has propelled the United States to heights of greatness, liberty and prosperity unparalleled in the history of the world for nearly 250 years. If our nation is to thrive for another 250 years, each co-equal branch of government must be willing to courageously exert the authority entrusted to it by our Founders.

LOOKIN’ AT YOU, CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS! STARING ANGRY, CONSERVATIVE JUDGE DAGGERS AT YOUR SNIVELING LITTLE FACE AND TELLING YOU TO DO YOUR DAMN JOB ALREADY!