VOA's final reckoning
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The Trump administration today sent out termination notices to hundreds of employees at Voice of America.
Included in that group are employees working for the network's Persian-language service who were called back from administrative leave just last week in the wake of Israel's attack on Iran, according to two people familiar with the decision.
Today's move — which makes official what has long been expected since hundreds of contract employees got termination notices in early May — is the latest step in the Trump administration's sweeping agenda to downsize the federal government, tamp down on the press and remake America's role in the global order.
Critics of the administration's focus on VOA have said that the network has played a vital role in combatting disinformation abroad. But the administration says these cuts are in service of 'cutting waste' and putting 'American taxpayers first.'
'Today, we took decisive action to effectuate President Trump's agenda to shrink the out-of-control federal bureaucracy,' senior presidential adviser KARI LAKE said in a statement.
The action eliminates 1,400 jobs, roughly an 85 percent cut to the workforce.
The last day on payroll for the employees will be Labor Day.
Those affected by today's cuts who are not eligible for mandatory retirement, are being terminated without severance pay — contradicting VOA's parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media's policy on severance, according to one of the people.
'As our legal team fight[s] for our rights under the law, we call on Congress to continue its long tradition of bipartisan support for VOA,' the named plaintiffs in VOA's lawsuit against the Trump administration said in a statement. 'Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the global information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America's voice.'
All of the lead plaintiffs — former White House bureau chief PATSY WIDAKUSWARA, former press freedom editor JESSICA JERREAT and former director of strategy and performance assessment KATE NEEPER — received their RIF notices today.
Lake said in her statement that 250 employees will remain across VOA, the the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and their parent company, USAGM. She noted that none of the OCB's 33 employees were terminated.
The government-funded network, which was founded 80 years ago to combat Nazi disinformation during World War II, has — largely unsuccessfully — fought the administration's decision in court. The administration has sent RIF notices to employees in small batches for weeks.
But today's notice could deliver the coup de grâce for VOA.
MESSAGE US — West Wing Playbook is obsessively covering the Trump administration's reshaping of the federal government. Are you a federal worker? A DOGE staffer? Have you picked up on any upcoming DOGE moves? We want to hear from you on how this is playing out. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.
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POTUS PUZZLER
Who was the first president to have a phone installed in the White House?
(Answer at bottom.)
Agenda Setting
GET OUTTA HERE: The Trump administration has put new restrictions on members of Congress' access to immigration enforcement field offices after several Democratic lawmakers were refused access or even arrested, Reuters' JONATHAN ALLEN reports. New DHS guidelines also say ICE has sole power over whether to deny or cancel a tour of a detention center by a member of Congress.
Federal law prohibits DHS from preventing members of Congress from entering any facility 'used to detain or otherwise house aliens,' and lawmakers do not have to give DHS prior notice of a planned visit. But the new guidelines say that the law does not apply to ICE field offices, although immigrants are often detained at ICE field offices before being transferred to an ICE jail.
TIME TO MERGE: The Trump administration is considering whether to transfer some programs from USDA's Rural Development agency to the Small Business Administration, according to documents obtained by our MARCIA BROWN. SBA staff have drafted an executive order for President DONALD TRUMP, which would give SBA control over three programs in the Rural Business Cooperative Service, which offers grants, loan guarantees and other capital products.
However, USDA officials have pushed back on the proposal in a briefing memo meant for Agriculture Secretary BROOKE ROLLINS, arguing that SBA is not equipped to handle those programs and that it would detract from the administration's priorities.
(WILD)FIRE AT WILL: The Trump administration's changes to federal wildfire response have left public health, meteorology, forest management and disaster experts concerned that the nation's wildfire defenses will be decimated, our ZACK COLMAN reports. In an executive order, Trump moved to consolidate federal firefighting personnel and ramp up the use of AI and other technologies to identify and respond to wildfires.
He's also looking for state and local officials to take more responsibility for wildfire response. The administration is 'doubling down on a failed approach,' said DAVE CALKIN, who served 25 years in the U.S. Forest Service before leaving in April through the deferred resignation program. 'This approach is incredibly hard on the firefighters,' he said. 'The firefighters are not well.'
WHO'S IN, WHO'S OUT
THE PLANS FOR EPA: The EPA has laid out more details on Trump's fiscal blueprint to slash the agency's funding, gut environmental justice efforts and downsize its workforce, our KEVIN BOGARDUS reports. The agency's 736-page justification to Congress for the fiscal 2026 plan was posted online recently.
EPA's environmental justice work, designed to aid underserved communities struggling with pollution, would be axed. Zero dollars nor personnel are allocated to community grants, technical assistance and coordination with the Superfund program for that work.
Musk Radar
BACK TO THE BASICS: ELON MUSK, who has been relatively quiet on his social media platform X in recent weeks, did not mince words about top Trump adviser SERGIO GOR both Thursday and today. Musk on Thursday called Gor — who played a role in his split with the president — a 'snake,' our GISELLE RUHIYYIH EWING reports. And this afternoon, Musk said that Gor is 'breaking the law,' referring to a New York Post story from this week that found Gor did not turn in his Standard Form 86, a questionnaire of more than 100 pages required for officials who need security clearances.
In the Courts
MORE ON USAGM: A federal judge today ordered USAGM to pay the money it owes to Open Technology Fund, a tech nonprofit promoting global internet freedom, for the rest of the fiscal year, our ANTHONY ADRAGNA reports. Judge ROYCE LAMBERTH of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the agency, and Lake, to immediately dispense more than $2 million in funds appropriated by Congress to OTF and to pay out another $2 million through the rest of fiscal 2025.
What We're Reading
Seeking Jobs and Purpose, Fired Federal Workers Form New Networks (NYT's Eileen Sullivan)
White House floats a new funding trick — and GOP lawmakers grimace (POLITICO's Jennifer Scholtes)
A former DOGE employee gives his account of working for the operation (NPR's Bobby Allyn)
POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER
In 1877, former President RUTHERFORD B. HAYES had the first telephone installed in the telegraph room in what was then known as the Executive Mansion, our ANDY GLASS reported in 2017. While Hayes embraced the new technology, few people called him. The phone, whose number was '1,' initially could only be reached by the Treasury Department. Fifty years later, HERBERT HOOVER had the first phone line installed at his desk in the Oval Office.
Former President BARACK OBAMA recounted Hayes' thoughts on the invention in 2012: 'It's a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'
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OTTAWA—Call it a prudent climbdown, a show of weakness, or an unavoidable concession. There are several ways to look at Prime Minister Mark Carney's 11th-hour decision to cancel the federal government's Digital Services Tax last weekend. But what if it's also a tangible example of exactly what Carney warned would happen? The Liberal leader won a minority government on April 28 with a pitch that no one was better placed than himself to protect Canada from Donald Trump. The U.S. president has mused about using 'economic force' to annex Canada. As if taunting or teasing this country, he questions why it exists, and keeps floating the prospect of it becoming the '51st state' of the U.S. Two days before the election, Carney spelled out how he understood all of this. 'The U.S. is trying to put economic pressure on us to gain major concessions, to the extreme of a level of integration of our countries that would impinge our sovereignty,' Carney said that day in King City, north of Toronto. Carney, in his final campaign conference, ruled out any prospect the U.S. would use military Flash forward to last week. There was Trump, posting on social media that Canada's incoming Digital Services Tax — a policy that would force American tech giants and other firms, including Canadian ones, to pay up — was nothing short of a 'blatant attack' on the United States. Trump declared he had cut off all negotiations to resolve the trade war that started earlier this year with his wave of tariffs on Canadian goods. In other words, Canada's most important commercial and military partner, the destination for 76 per cent of all exports last year , was willing to ditch talks and dictate terms that could jeopardize thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity. All over a domestic policy the Americans didn't like. Barely 48 hours later, shortly before midnight on a Sunday, the government announced the tax was dead. Not only would Canada not implement the policy as planned, it would repeal the 2024 law that created it. Is this Trump using economic pressure to force Canada's hand? 'It is exactly that,' said Lawrence Herman, a veteran trade lawyer and special counsel with the firm, Cassidy Levy Kent. 'It's an example of, on a particular issue, how much pressure can be brought to bear to force Canada to abandon not only a policy, but a law that has been in force for 18 months.' In Herman's view, the decision looks like a 'significant retreat' by the government, which shows 'how dependent we are on a reasonable relationship' with Canada's largest trading partner. Other policies that Trump has complained about, such as the supply management system for dairy and poultry, could be next, he said. 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Axworthy did not respond to an interview request Thursday. For Jean Charest, a former Quebec premier who sits on the government's Canada-U.S. advisory council, the situation illustrates the 'chaos' of dealing with Trump, whose administration is grappling with trade talks and tariffs threats against most countries on the planet. This meant that Carney's government was operating 'in a world of very bad choices,' Charest said. Deciding to scrap the Digital Services Tax, in that context, was 'certainly a legitimate choice,' he said. 'We are not in an ordinary world of negotiations,' Charest added. 'It would be nice to think, 'You give, I give ... we compromise.' It doesn't work that way with Donald Trump, and we're making our way through this by trying to protect essentially what's the most important for us in the short term, and that's a negotiation that has some legs.' Charest noted that there was opposition inside Canada to the Digital Services Tax, which would have applied back to 2022 with a three per cent tax on Canadian revenues from digital services companies with more than $1.1 billion in global earnings and $20 million inside Canada. The U.S. also pushed back against the policy when Joe Biden was in power. David Pierce, vice-president of government relations with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said his business lobby group felt the Digital Services Tax should be paused. He also said it would have been wrong to proceed with it after the U.S. dropped a controversial provision from Trump's major budget bill last week: the so-called 'revenge tax' that would have hit the U.S. assets of foreign businesses and individuals. That decision came as the G7 agreed to exempt American firms from a co-ordinated effort to ensure corporations pay a minimum tax, which was 'absolutely a win' for the U.S. Even so, Pierce said Canada likely had no choice but to drop the policy, given Trump's exploitation of Canada's 'weakness' — its major economic reliance on trade with the U.S. 'We just hope that this now paves the way for a good renewed deal,' said Pierce. The ultimate goal of the federal government in that deal, at least publicly, has been to return to the terms of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which Trump signed in 2018 during his first term, after disparaging North American free trade as unfair to his country. That would mean lifting the rounds of tariffs Trump has imposed since the winter, with import duties tied to concerns about drugs and migration over the border, and others that Trump slapped on Canadian autos, steel and aluminum in a bid to promote those sectors in the U.S. Canada has responded with countertariffs on its own that the government says hit more than $80 billion worth of American imports to Canada. Canada's lead trade negotiator with the Trump administration, Ambassador Kirsten Hillman, was not available for an interview this week, the embassy in Washington told the Star. Charest, however, said he believes it is possible that Canada could accept some level of tariffs in a July 21 deal, so long as they have no material effect. Such 'zero-effect' tariffs could only kick in at levels of trade that Canada doesn't or likely won't achieve, for example. Yet there's a question of how much any deal can be relied upon, so long as Trump is in the White House, unilaterally imposing tariffs that Canada views as 'illegal' violations of the 2018 trade deal. 'Trump is arguing about supply management and the (Digital Services Tax), but it's the U.S. that is in flagrant breach of its trade obligations. It's abandoned the CUSMA, virtually behaving as if it did not exist and the U.S. signature has no meaning,' Herman said. 'So we are in a world where rules and the rules-based system, and the stability that that treaty was supposed to provide, have gone by the board.' That means, at least for now, the Carney government is operating in a world where Canada's foremost ally, the colossus to the south, will use economic force to get what it wants.
