Updated on March 16, 2025, at 3:30p.m.
President Donald Trump's administration over the weekend began making deep cuts to Voice of America and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with a press advocacy group saying all VOA employees have been put on leave.
Among those impacted: Radio and TV Martí, which broadcasts from headquarters in Miami. The Trump administration is moving to shut the services down.
The government-run media radio station first began broadcasting in 1985. Later, TV Martí, along with a digital website, were launched to beam Spanish-language news into Cuba.
The stations are operated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting. The Miami Herald, a WLRN news content partner, reported Saturday that several full-time employees and contractors at the Martí stations were placed on administrative leave with full pay and benefits.
“During the period that you are on administrative leave, you are not to enter USAGM premises,” according to an email obtained by the Herald said.
Radio and TV Martí started to broadcast news and pro-democracy messaging into communist Cuba. But in recent years even members of Miami’s Cuban exile community have questioned whether it really reached many Cubans at all on the island.
“Radio and TV Martí was a prominent symbol of the South Florida Cuban-American community's fight against the Cuban government — and there are some really good journalists in Radio and TV Martí," Cuban exile Andy Gomez, the former director of the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, told WLRN.
"But TV Martí was hardly seen on the island, and Cubans I have talked to that listened to Radio Martí found it did not help them in their daily struggles.”
Gomez said one benefit of the apparent Martí closures is that it may prompt Cuban exile leadership to pivot to more effective means of undermining Cuba's dictatorship.
“We have the opportunity to put the politics of passion aside and review what has worked and what hasn’t worked," he added.
READ MORE: 'Bloody Saturday' at Voice of America and other U.S.-funded networks
Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law late Friday night.
On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidate whom Trump named a senior adviser to the agency, posted on X that employees should check their email. That coincided with notices going out placing Voice of America staff on paid administrative leave.
BREAKING—The President has issued an Executive Order titled Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy. It affects USAGM and its outlets VOA and OCB.
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) March 15, 2025
If you are an employee of the agency please check your email immediately for more information. https://t.co/JmKMA0rp54
Later, Reporters Without Borders said the notices extended to everyone who works for VOA.
The advocacy group said it “condemns this decision as a departure from the U.S.’s historic role as a defender of free information and calls on the U.S. government to restore VOA and urges Congress and the international community to take action against this unprecedented move.”
The Agency for Global Media also sent notices terminating grants to Radio Free Asia and other programming run by the agency.
Voice of America transmits United States domestic news into other countries, often translated into local languages. Radio Free Asia, Europe and Marti beam news into countries with authoritarian regimes in those regions like China, North Korea and Russia.
Combined, the networks reach an estimated 427 million people. They date back to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. power and combat authoritarianism that includes USAID, another agency targeted by Trump.
The latest reductions are especially provocative because the Agency for Global Media is an independent agency chartered by Congress, which passed a law in 2020 limiting the power of the agency's presidentially appointed executives. Trump has already taken several moves to gut congressionally-mandated programs, setting up a potential Supreme Court showdown over the limits of presidential power.
Trump's order requiring reductions also includes several other, lesser-known government agencies such as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan think tank, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.
The Trump administration has already made several controversial moves regarding Voice of America, including suspending a respected journalist who noted criticism of Trump and canceling contracts that allowed VOA to use material from independent news organizations, such as The Associated Press.
Thee Associated Press contributed to this report.
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