The VOA Ruling: Kari Lake Never Had the Authority

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The VOA ruling is simple, and it is damning. Kari Lake never had the authority. The DC Circuit said so when it ruled that the firing of Voice of America director Michael Abramowitz was illegal. The administration acted as if it could take over a news organization by force of will, and the court said no.

Voice of America is not a campaign rally. It is a news service that broadcasts to the world in dozens of languages, and it exists to tell the truth as it is, not to repeat whatever the president wants the world to hear. Its independence is the whole point. A VOA that says what the White House tells it to say is not a news service. It is a loudspeaker.

Abramowitz was the director, and Lake moved to fire him as part of the administration's effort to take control of the agency. The DC Circuit looked at the move and found that Lake did not have the authority to do it. The firing was illegal. That is not a technicality. It is the court saying that the person who claimed the power did not have it, and that the man she fired should not have been fired.

Why does it matter? Because this administration has treated every independent institution as a target. It has gone after the press, the courts, the universities and the agencies that are supposed to be insulated from politics. The VOA was one more target, and the reason is the same. An independent news service cannot be controlled, and this administration does not like things it cannot control.

Lake is a particular kind of figure in this story. She is a former television anchor who built her political career on attacking the press and on claiming elections she lost. Putting her in charge of a news organization was a statement of intent, and the statement was that the news would now serve the administration. The court has now said the way she went about it was unlawful.

What happens next is a question of whether the ruling will be honored in practice. A court can declare a firing illegal, but the administration has to actually follow the ruling. The history of this administration suggests it will look for another way to get the same result, another official, another legal theory, another end run around the decision. The courts will have to keep watching.

The ruling matters beyond the VOA, too. It is one more case in a growing line of decisions where the courts have told this administration that it cannot just do whatever it wants. The law still has limits, and the people who run the agencies still have to follow it, even when the president has given them a different instruction.

For the journalists at VOA, and for the audiences around the world who depend on them, the ruling is a small piece of good news. The director's firing was illegal. The woman who did it never had the authority. The news service is still there, and the courts noticed when someone tried to take it.

WEAR YOUR VOICE