A U.S. district judge blocked Kari Lake and the Trump administration from terminating Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s federal funding on Tuesday, granting the news organization a temporary win in its fight against the administration’s efforts to close its doors.
In a court filing, Judge Royce C. Lamberth granted RFE/RL’s request for a temporary restraining order against Lake, who oversees the U.S. Agency for Global Media, asserting that terminating the organization’s federal grant would violate the congressionally mandated flow of funding to the news outlet.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is funded by Congress with the mission to promote the free flow of news and democracy globally. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were initially created to deliver news across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
According to Lamberth, the news organization “has, for decades, operated as one of the organizations that Congress has statutorily designated to carry out this policy,” and “the leadership of USAGM cannot, with one sentence of reasoning offering virtually no explanation, force RFE/RL to shut down — even if the President has told them to do so.”
The judge also stated that terminating the grant would cause “irreparable harm” in shuttering RFE/RL’s operations.
President Donald Trump earlier this month called for the elimination of funding for “non-statutory elements” of several government entities, including USAGM, prompting the agency to terminate federal grants funding multiple news outlets including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
RFE/RL filed a suit last week against USAGM, Lake and another agency official, Victor Morales, seeking to block its grant termination on the grounds that funding its operations constitutes a “statutory function” of USAGM. The suit also alleged that the agency is breaching federal law by attempting to cut RFE/RL’s funding, as the organization is funded by Congress through the International Broadcasting Act of 1973.
The news organization had also requested that USAGM disburse the nearly $7.5 million in funding that Congress had appropriated for its operations through the first two weeks of March. According to Lamberth’s order, USAGM notified the court that it would disburse the funds shortly before the scheduled hearing on the complaint Monday, rendering the request moot.
RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus welcomed Lambert’s “thoughtful and airtight ruling to prevent USAGM from ignoring the will of Congress,” saying in a statement that the organization looks forward to “further advancing our case that it’s unconstitutional to deny us the funds that Congress has appropriated to RFE/RL for the rest of the fiscal year.”
Beyond the immediate legal implications of the ruling, Capus said the judge’s order “sends a strong message to our journalists around the world: Their mission as designed by Congress is a worthy and valuable one and should continue. For 75 years, RFE/RL has been closely aligned with American national security interests by fighting censorship and propaganda in many of the world’s most repressive societies.”
