A federal judge has ruled that Kari Lake never had the legal authority to serve as acting CEO of the US Agency for Global Media, voiding the actions she took during her tenure, including the layoffs of hundreds of agency employees, leading to an uncertain future.
US District Judge Royce Lamberth issued the ruling late last week, granting summary judgment to agency employees and their union who had challenged Lake’s appointment under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution and the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The decision invalidates Lake’s August 2025 reduction-in-force notices affecting 532 employees, along with any other actions taken under delegated CEO authority.
At the center of the ruling is a straightforward legal problem: Lake was never legally eligible to hold the acting CEO role in the first place. When USAGM CEO Amanda Bennett resigned in January 2025, the Vacancies Act required the agency’s first assistant, the person in that role at the time of the vacancy, to automatically step in. Lake was not employed by USAGM when that vacancy occurred.
She was later installed as Senior Advisor, then Deputy CEO, and designated acting CEO in July 2025, which Lamberth found to be an unlawful end-run around the statute’s requirements.
The administration attempted a secondary defense, arguing that even if Lake’s acting CEO designation was improper, she could still exercise CEO powers through formal delegations issued by acting CEO Victor Morales. Lamberth rejected that too, finding that the Vacancies Act explicitly prohibits using delegation statutes to accomplish what the appointment process does not allow. Lake had testified that she exercised 95% of the CEO’s duties under those delegations, with Morales retaining responsibility only for writing reports.
The ruling lands after months of legal and operational turbulence at the agency. Since early 2025, the Trump administration moved aggressively to dismantle USAGM, terminating or suspending roughly 85% of its workforce and cutting Voice of America from 49 languages to four. Funding was simultaneously cut off to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Lake also canceled content contracts with AP, Reuters, and AFP, replacing them with a deal with One America News Network; moves that drew scrutiny from federal judges over whether they violated VOA’s statutory requirement to remain politically impartial.
What happens next is uncertain but contested on several fronts.
An appeal to the DC Circuit is almost certain, as the administration has challenged virtually every adverse ruling in this case, and a motion to freeze the ruling pending appeal would follow the same playbook that previously allowed cuts to continue after an earlier district court loss. Another layer: lawmakers approved VOA funding that reportedly exceeds what Lake requested, raising a parallel question of whether the administration is legally required to spend money Congress has already appropriated for the agency.
