When the Nazis rose to power, America launched Voice of America (VOA)—originally a broadcast (now multimedia) platform—to combat authoritarian information-control. Its multilingual staff, has spent 80 decades making fact-based journalism accessible to societies drowning in propaganda. That is, until Trump got his hands on it.

Now, it’s getting a MAGA face-lift—funneling content from a famously far-right, pro-Trump political commentary television channel, One America News (OAN), which used to be supported by Verizon Fios and DirecTV until their contracts expired following OAN’s coverage of right-wing conspiracy theories and disinformation.

The network’s former director, Geoffrey Cowan, successfully argued to the Clinton budget office that his employees were essential, because “if VOA were to stop broadcasting, those listeners would doubt that the US was still a powerful force,” Cowan wrote in his 2025 LA Times essay titled, “Under Trump, the Voice of America has fallen silent. U.S. enemies are cheering.”

Making enemies with dictators across the globe, VOA feared it might one day go dark—but thanks to its “firewall,” enshrined in 1994, it was protected from the American government, itself. But Trump’s 2020 administration dismantled the firewall, and after years of calling it a "fake news network” with liberal bias, ordered funding cuts in March—which, for all intents and purposes, shut it down and triggered court fights that are yet to be resolved.

Now, about 1,400 jobs (85% of positions) are being eliminated by Lake’s agency—per the March executive order. The cuts shake VOA down to its bones, all but wiping it out.

Kari Lake, who Trump appointed to direct VOA, spared no time, making an agreement with OAN, who has offered to provide VOA’s news and video free of charge.

“For decades,” Lake wrote in a press release. “American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that’s been riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste. That ends now.”

Her solution? OAN—a network long denounced for its lack of journalistic standards.

In fact, its White House correspondent, Daniel Baldwin, reported that “President Donald Trump has ushered in a new era of American prosperity in just 100 days,” completely dismissing the far more impactful effects of the policies he praised: “the closed border, inflation eradicated, women protected, investments galore.” When Baldwin has attended White House coverage opportunities, he’s asserted all prior US presidents lacked the conviction to begin talks with Russia, asking Trump, “What gave you the moral courage and conviction to step forward and lead that?”

By law, VOA is obligated to provide a balanced news diet to countries where it operates, according to its former correspondent, Steve Herman. “VOA is not to be the voice of left America nor the voice of right America,” he said.

Lake said in a statement that neither she nor OAN will have any editorial authority over VOA programming, but that OAN will be providing their newsfeed—which is innately contradictory of Herman’s recollection of VOA’s policies.

Notably, Jim Kessler, Third Way’s Executive Vice President for Policy, recalled of his 100+ times on VOA during a CBS segment, “It was super balanced and under strict news to be balanced. I’m a democrat and was always on with a republican, every single time. It is a propaganda station for America. It is now a propaganda station for the fringe right.”

In 1942, Voice of America promised, “The news may be good or bad for us—we shall tell you the truth.” In 2024, that truth is being rewritten—not by foreign powers, but by the very government VOA was meant to stand apart from.

The quiet coup of American media didn’t start with a takeover of CNN or the New York Times—it started with the silencing of the voice we once used to tell the world what they were up against.

The American government’s next victim? The Voice of America. And they’re replacing it with a megaphone.