The Trump administration on Thursday fired nearly 600 employees at Voice of America, a federally funded news network that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedoms.
The layoffs targeted contractors, most of them journalists but also some administrative employees, and amounted to over a third of Voice of America’s staff. They signaled that the Trump administration planned to continue its efforts to dismantle the broadcaster despite a court ruling last month that ordered the federal government to maintain robust news programming at the network, which President Trump has called “the voice of radical America.”
In another sign of the Trump administration’s hostility toward the broadcaster, the federal building in Washington that houses the media organization was put up for sale on Thursday.
Some of the journalists who were terminated on Thursday were from countries with repressive governments that persecute journalists for independent reporting, Mr. Abramowitz said in the email to employees on Thursday.
Those journalists now have to leave the United States by the end of June, as their immigration status is tied to employment at the news organization.
In a letter sent on Thursday to employees who had been fired, the Trump administration cited “the government’s convenience” as a reason for the terminations. The employees were under so-called personal services contracts, making them easier to let go than regular full-time employees with full civil service protections.
Mr. Trump has accused the outlet, which delivers news to countries with repressive regimes — including Russia, China and Iran — of spreading “anti-American” and partisan “propaganda.”
Voice of America, which was founded in 1942, halted operations on March 15, a day after Mr. Trump signed an executive order seeking to gut the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Its news programming has been partly restored since the April court ruling that stopped the Trump administration from dismantling the agency and other newsrooms it oversees.
The Trump administration has challenged the April ruling, claiming that the lower court had gone too far in halting other firings that took place in March.
The Trump administration did not appeal parts of the April order that mandated the resumption of Voice of America’s news programming. The lower court found that Congress had required the executive branch to keep the network as “a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”
Ms. Lake said last week that Voice of America would incorporate content from One America News Network, a pro-Trump television channel that has endorsed falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election.