In a major victory for federal workers, a federal district judge has ruled that President Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media had no legal authority to terminate hundreds of employees as part of an effort to dismantle the agency’s Voice of America.
In a case brought by AFGE and other plaintiffs, Judge Royce Lamberth from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said Kari Lake, Trump’s senior advisor to the agency, ruled March 7 that the actions taken by Lake since March 2025 targeting VOA workers are legally void.
This includes a reduction in force action in Auguust that eliminated hundreds of VOA jobs. The RIF had previously been suspended by Judge Lamberth pending rulings by the Court, and thus all the employees targeted by the RIF have remained employed.
Shortly before the now-cancelled RIF, the administration and Lake also attempted to cancel USAGM employees’ collective bargaining rights. But AFGE and our sister union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, successfully challenged that action in court – restoring those workers’ union rights and union contracts. Now their RIF is officially cancelled too.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for Voice of America workers, their unions, journalism, and the global free press. It’s also a reminder of what working people can achieve when we stand together, in our unions, against the misguided, illegal attempts to dismantle our federal government,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a press statement.
The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of 13 plaintiffs consisting of federal worker unions, individual employees, and press freedom organizations. The four union plaintiffs representing USAGM employees are AFGE, AFSCME, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), and The News Guild CWA. The seven individual employees include VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, VOA press freedom editor Jessica Jerreat, and Kate Neeper, USAGM’s director of strategy and performance assessment. The two press freedom organizations are Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) and Reporters Without Borders, Inc. (RSF USA).
Plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, Democracy Defenders Fund, and the Government Accountability Project.
AFGE has mounted one of its most aggressive campaigns in recent memory to fight for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees who have been working without pay since the DHS funding lapse on Feb. 14.
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In a significant win, a federal judge on Friday granted a motion filed by the AFGE National Veterans Affairs Council to enforce a preliminary injunction order reinstating the collective bargaining contract covering more than 300,000 employees.
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On March 26, Dennis “Sarge” Guerrero, of AFGE Local 3511, traveled to Capitol Hill to testify on the need for the Department of Veterans Affairs to stop its plan to downgrade VA police officers.
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