A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Kari Lake, a senior official at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, illegally fired Voice of America director Michael Abramowitz without independent board approval, and the panel unanimously affirmed an injunction backing his reinstatement.
We conclude by considering remedy. Defendants assert that the district court lacked authority to enjoin them from removing Abramowitz without the Broadcasting Boards approval, the panel wrote. That argument, too, is foreclosed by our precedent Defendants contest the district courts power to enjoin Abramowitzs removal, but they point to nothing to counter his contention that no other form of relief would redress his injury. The statutory body with hiring and firing authority over network heads is the International Broadcasting Advisory Board.
Abramowitz said in a statement obtained by Politico that he was gratified by the ruling and looked forward to returning to the important work Voice of America does worldwide on behalf of the American people. The appeals court upheld a decision last year by Senior Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a Reagan appointee, who had found that the agency lacked authority to fire Abramowitz and could be ordered to reinstate him.
Lamberth had also ruled that Lake was leading the agency unlawfully, a finding she said she strongly disagreed with, and in a statement previously obtained by The Washington Post she said, The American people gave President Trump a mandate to cut bloated bureaucracy, eliminate waste, and restore accountability to government, and that an activist judge is trying to stand in the way of those efforts at USAGM. In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at gutting the parent agency, and Lamberth later ordered Voice of America to rehire employees and, in April 2025, indefinitely blocked attempts to dismantle the broadcaster.
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