Judge Rules That Kari Lake Is Still A Loser
Making the Federal Vacancies Reform Act great again.
Right now would be a really good time for the US to have a direct line to speak to the Iranian people. A radio station, broadcasting directly into Iran from a friendly Gulf state like, say … Kuwait.
But we don't because Arizona’s perennial loser Kari Lake pulled the plug last year on most of Radio Farda, which previously broadcast news in Farsi into Iran, along with much of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the multiple outlets that fall under the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
Lake has been locked in a pitched battle with a Judge Royce Lamberth in DC as she desperately tries to prove herself to President Trump by burning down the media outlets which have been a major source of American soft power since World War II. But instead the court ruled that installing her as “Deputy CEO” of USAGM was an illegal end-run around Senate confirmation, and everything she did was a nullity.
Damn these activist liberal judges appointed by, uh, Ronald Reagan.
Fake it ‘til you make it
As president-elect, Trump promised to appoint Lake director of VOA, “to 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.” And maybe at the time he really meant it! But once in office, Trump fired most of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, which must approve the director of VOA. Without a quorum, no one could vote in Lake as the agency director. So instead she was named “Deputy CEO” of USAGM.
At the same time, longtime USAGM advisor Victor Morales was elevated to Acting CEO, whereupon he immediately executed a memo devolving most of his authority to Lake. But those were the DOGE days, when whole federal agencies were disappearing overnight, and by then the president had decided what he really wanted was get rid of USAGM entirely.
On March 14, 2025, Trump signed an executive order targeting various “unnecessary” agencies as the Minority Business Development Agency, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and of course USAGM for destruction. Each of these was established by Congress and fully funded in the budget, and yet the president ordered them “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, and such entities shall reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”
With her borrowed powers, Lake set about canceling contracts, shutting down broadcast servers, firing employees, and terminating leases. She called USAGM “a rotten piece of fish” and vowed to end it down forever, perhaps replacing it with feeds from conservative outlets like One America News.
The fired journalists sued, and Judge Royce Lamberth, a conservative “old bull” blocked Lake from terminating most employees and shutting down the agency entirely. But she did succeed in ending many of the foreign-language broadcasts which spread American values and provided real news to citizens living in nations without a free press.
On July 31, Lake took over as Acting CEO of USAGM. By law, USAGM’s head is a principal officer who must be confirmed by the Senate. And if Trump had bothered to nominate her, the same supine Congress that confirmed Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, and Robert Kennedy would almost certainly have held its nose and waved her along. Instead, Lake claimed authority under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (5 USC § 3345), which automatically authorizes the first assistant to a Senate-confirmed official to take over if the position becomes vacant.
Déjà vu all over again
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly what Trump did when he couldn’t get his preferred candidates confirmed as US Attorneys in blue states thanks to the Senate’s blue slip rule. Attorney General Pam Bondi purported to elevate unconfirmable cronies like Alina Habba in New Jersey and Bill Essayli in Los Angeles by making them their own first assistants and then replacing themselves by action of the FVRA when their interim appointments timed out. As a backstop, Bondi appointed the cronies as special counsels, purporting to delegate all the authority of the US Attorney’s office to them.
The USAGM litigation is also a callback to the first Trump administration, when he tried to illegally install Ken “Cooch” Cuccinelli as acting Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). As Virginia’s attorney general, Cuccinelli tried to ban dildos (for real), which failed to lead him to victory in the 2013 gubernatorial race. Cooch went on to lead the Senate Conservatives Fund, dedicated to primarying sitting Republican Senators from the right. This did not endear him to those sitting Republican Senators, who made clear that Trump’s plan to get Cuccinelli confirmed as head of DHS (or literally anything else) was DOA. So Trump came up with another plan, inventing a new position called the Principal Deputy Director and effectively inserting Cuccinelli into the line of succession at USCIS via the FVRA.
In 2020, Judge Randolph Moss held that “Defendants’ construction of the vacant-office provision is at odds with the statutory purpose of the FVRA” and voided several of Cuccinelli’s directives because he’d never been the legitimate head of USCIS. And in 2025, the Third Circuit and six trial judges across the country similarly agreed that Bondi couldn’t use the FVRA to evade the Constitutional and statutory requirement of Senate confirmation.
This weekend, Judge Royce Lamberth drew on both those rulings to find that Lake had never been lawfully appointed as Acting CEO of USAGM. Section 3345(a)(1) automatically elevates the first assistant, but only if that assistant is serving at the moment when the Senate-confirmed officer leaves. USAGM CEO Amanda Bennett resigned at Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, and Lake didn’t join the agency until March.
Sections 3345(a)(2) and (a)(3) allow the president to appoint someone with relevant agency experience or an official who has been Senate-confirmed to a different position to temporarily lead an agency. But since the president never officially tapped Lake, that’s not going to help her either.
As a third fallback position, the DOJ argued that Lake was acting under a lawful delegation of authority from Morales, pursuant to 22 USC § 1435. But, as Judge Lamberth pointed out, that statute only refers to a delegation by the Secretary of State.
“Although the Court assumes that this citation was not purposely misleading, Lake does not acknowledge the gap between her characterization of § 1435 and its plain text, let alone suggest why the Court should infer that when Congress explicitly referred to the Secretary of State, it in fact meant to include the CEO of USAGM,” he sniffed.
Benchslap
Judge Lamberth’s apparent fury may have something to do with the rushed posture of his ruling. On February 26, 2026, the plaintiffs informed the court that Lake had just fired off a tweet inviting USAGM employees to check their emails to find out about “our continued efforts to modernize and right size @USAGM.”
The email offered USAGM employees a chance to voluntarily quit by March 9 and earn six months’ severance. If they stuck around, they’d be fired as soon as the agency could get out from under Judge Lamberth’s order.
The plaintiffs raced back to Judge Lamberth and requested that the court rule on their motion for summary judgment by March 9 because “a decision from this Court could significantly influence employee decisionmaking by providing valuable information before the deadline to respond.”
And plaintiffs got their wish. Judge Lamberth granted their motion for summary judgment on this issue, holding that “any actions taken by Lake during her asserted tenure as acting CEO between “July 31 and November 19, 2025, including but not limited to the August 29 reduction-in-force effort, or actions taken pursuant to the March or July delegations of CEO authority, are void.”
Lake responded with her usual grace and aplomb, calling one of the longest-tenured conservatives in Washington an “activist judge.”
So weird that Trump never got around to nominating such a paragon of professionalism and stability for Senate confirmation!
Ah, well, she can always go back to Arizona and run for office another dozen times.
actually, she's bought a house here in Davenport, Iowa, where I live. Speculation is she may run for something here. She was a local tv anchor here for a few years.
It's always funny that there are perfectly legal ways to play this game. Especially with the supine Congress you mentioned. Noem's successor will probably be just as bad because that's who Trump wants. But with Lake they just didn't do the homework, the same way in the others. I can't tell if they don't respect the process, or they're just stupid; because it looks the same.