A watchdog found USAGM is rehiring staff, restoring contracts and replacing systems after cuts meant to save taxpayers money.
By Ben Johansen10/02/2026
The Trump administration moved last year to gut the federal agency that oversees Voice of America in the name of eliminating waste and shrinking the government, saying it would cost $153 million in fiscal 2026 to shut the agency down.
Instead, Congress gave the U.S. Agency for Global Media $643 million that fiscal year to keep operating — and now the USAGM is rebuilding what the administration dismantled in the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term.
That includes reinstating canceled contracts, rehiring staff and buying new equipment — while paying 420 employees $3.2 million every two weeks to remain on leave, according to a new report by the State Department’s inspector general. The State Department and USAGM, an independent federal agency, share the same inspector general office.
The watchdog doesn’t tally the total of the shutdown whipsaw and resulting lawsuits, which are still working their way through the courts. But it notes that some decisions intended to save money were being reversed, “incurring additional costs to taxpayers.”
The findings offer a view into how the DOGE-era push to slash the federal government to cut costs created new ones, and how haphazard cuts and ill-planned program terminations and location moves also hampered the agency’s mission.
The report found USAGM could not demonstrate that it had “sufficiently considered the likely costs and benefits” before dramatically reducing its workforce and operations. In addition, the report notes that the cuts “diminished USAGM’s capacity to fulfill its core statutory mission of informing, engaging, and connecting people worldwide in support of freedom and democracy.”
“President Trump was elected to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse across the administration, including at the Voice of America — and efforts to improve efficiency at USAGM have been a tremendous success,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement.
USAGM did not return a request for comment.
“The obscene waste of taxpayer money is sickening, but it hurts even more to know we destroyed our own soft power. How could you lose an audience of 360 million?” said Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s former White House bureau chief. She was placed on administrative leave last year and is one of the lead plaintiffs in the suit that forced VOA’s staff to be recalled. “Their trust was built on the work of thousands of VOA journalists over decades, and it’s gone.”
Prior to the cuts, VOA broadcast in 49 languages. As of July, it broadcast in seven, the report notes. The initial firings and cost-cutting at the agency also meant, for at least a few months, U.S.-funded broadcasters stopped programming for strategically important places, including Iran, China, Afghanistan, North Korea, Russia and Ukraine, the report notes.
Though programming in those languages has been restored as of July, some is not as robust as before — for instance, VOA programming to China is only restored in Mandarin; before it also provided service in Cantonese and Tibetan.
The cuts began almost immediately after Trump signed a March 2025 executive order directing USAGM to eliminate non-statutory functions and reduce its remaining operations and personnel to the minimum required by law. The following day, USAGM placed most of its workforce on paid administrative leave, moved to terminate grants and canceled numerous contracts.
At the time, USAGM cast the moves explicitly as an effort to protect taxpayers. In a statement announcing the downsizing, the agency declared itself “not salvageable” and described it as a burden on taxpayers while announcing the downsizing.
But rapidly cutting the agency did not necessarily mean the government stopped paying for it. More than 1,000 employees were initially placed on administrative leave with full pay and benefits as the administration sought to dismantle USAGM. Efforts to eliminate jobs and cancel grants also became tied up in litigation, with some moves later reversed or altered.