Trump Moves to Gut Several Agencies, Targeting Voice of America, Libraries

By Brianna Tucker and Emily Davies / The Washington Post

12:41 JST, March 16, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to eliminate several additional federal agencies, including one that oversees thefederally funded media outlet Voice of America (VOA), testing the limits of his authoritative power as he seeks to shrink the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy.

One order signed Friday night calls for the agencies – some of which are focused on minority business enterprises, museum and library services, and homelessness prevention – to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”

A second executive order revoked 19 executive actions signed by President Joe Biden that promoted clean energy and environmental goals. The order terminates proclamations of national monuments created by Biden and ends the use of the Defense Production Act to expand the U.S. manufacturing of clean energy technology, such as for electric heat pumps and solar panels, among other Biden-era policies.

The White House claimed the rules stem from “radical ideology” and were wasteful. One of the regulations that Trump canceled was a Biden order that raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors.

The orders fulfill a longtime campaign promise from Trump: to erase signature labor and climate policy achievements by his predecessor by repealing dozens of Biden-era environmental rules and protections, which the president argues created more regulation and increased America’s dependence on foreign nations.

But the moves also reverse pro-labor executive actions such as those that protected workplace safety and boosted income for those low-wage sectors. Taken together, these reversals would directly hurt many of the rank-and-file blue-collar workers who supported Trump in the November election.

Since his return to office, Trump has signed a dizzying array of executive actions to enact his agenda and reduce the size of government, many of which have been challenged by opponents in court or reversed. Others test the boundaries of presidential power by potentially exceeding executive authority and bypassing congressional authorization.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – the parent of VOA, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia – is an independent agency established by Congress. In 2020, Congress passed a law intended to limit the power of the agency’s presidentially appointed chief executive. More than 1,300 journalists, producers and staff at VOA received an email saying were placed on administrative leave Saturday, VOA Director Michael Abramowitz wrote on his private Facebook page.

The targeting of USAGM is not new, but concern around the media organization’s fate was renewed this year when Trump appointed Kari Lake, a loyalist who ran unsuccessfully for governor and Senate in Arizona, to serve as a special adviser at the agency.

Trump and other Republicans have long criticized VOA, whose mission is to counter authoritarian propaganda for foreign audiences with independent news. During his first administration, Trump chastised VOA’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, derisively called the outlet the “voice of the Soviet Union” and accused the independent news service of promoting Chinese government propaganda in its reporting about the outbreak. He also declined to renew visas of dozens of foreign journalists who work for the agency.

In early February, tech billionaire Elon Musk, who spearheads the U.S. DOGE Service tasked with reducing the size of government, had also called for the closure of VOA and other outlets at USAGM.

The Trump administration also terminated a grant for the Open Technology Fund, an internet freedom nonprofit that helped create Signal, the popular encrypted messaging app. The fund was slated to receive roughly $43.5 million annually in government funding through the USAGM, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

The new orders follow the administration’s ongoing efforts to shut down foreign policy and aid organizations – many of them established by congressional mandate. On Friday, several members of DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, showed up at the U.S. Institute of Peace accompanied by FBI agents, according to a statement from the institute on Saturday. After the institute officials informed them of the group’s status as a private and independent “non-executive branch agency,” the DOGE representatives departed, the statement said.

Similar DOGE interventions this month at the U.S. African Development Foundation and the Inter-American Foundation were successful in at least temporarily closing down those agencies. They were among the agencies listed in an executive order on Feb. 19 that called for their elimination.

Other entities targeted Friday also make broad impacts in Washington, such as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan global policy think tank. Also affected were the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which supports and funds libraries, archives and museums in every state; the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which focuses on labor disputes; the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which centers on economically distressed communities; and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

The nonprofit EveryLibrary Institute decried the order and outlined that IMLS is statutorily required to send federal funding to state libraries. “Congress created this federal block grant program to support and extend library services in all the states through the state libraries,” a statement said. The American Library Association similarly criticized the order.

The money that could be saved by Trump’s latest actions is not even a blip in the government’s $1.7 trillion budget. The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, for example, requested $4.3 million in this fiscal year’s budget.

The Wilson Center, whose operations also depend on private donations, requested $14.1 million in government funding.

The Wilson Center, a think tank with a slogan “fiercely nonpartisan,” is run by Mark Green, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin who is affiliated with experts who have held leadership positions in the Republican National Committee. The center was created in 1968 through an act of Congress to be a living memorial to former president Woodrow Wilson, with the idea that it would serve as a nexus between scholarship and policymaking.

A spokesperson with the Wilson Center declined to comment on the order.

Hope Harrison, a historian who completed two fellowships at the Wilson Center and serves as a co-chair of one program’s advisory board, described the organization as “a shining center of the open arms of the U.S. to scholars and to independent thought.”

The Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, for example, studied cases and wrote policy briefs about the dangers of the spread of such weapons, using historical context to advise on how to interact with countries including Iran and North Korea.

“One of the things at stake with this, but with so many other of the executive orders, is our standing in the world as a place of research and, in this case, policy-relevant research,” Harrison said. “I just have to think that Ronald Reagan would be rolling in his grave at the idea that this institution that has done so much to elucidate the history of the Cold War and its relevance would be at risk.”