A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from removing Michael Abramowitz as director of Voice of America, the government-run news outlet that the White House has targeted for deep staffing cuts.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan, ruled that Abramowitz cannot be removed from his position without the approval of the majority of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board.

In June, layoff notices were sent to more than 600 employn June, layoff notices were sent to more than 600 employees of Voice of America and the government agency that oversees it. Abramowitz was placed on administrative leave along with almost the entire Voice of America staff. He was told he would be fired effective Aug. 31.

Lamberth concluded that firing Abramowitz would be “plainly contrary to law.”

“The defendants' own representations, in and out of court, indicate that they have already effectively removed Abramowitz from his role as director,” the judge wrote.

Kari Lake, whom President Donald Trump named as a senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, told a congressional panel that the agency is “rotten to the core.” The agency also houses Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba.

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The Democratic Party has been struggling to unify itself and get energized in the aftermath of its devastating loss to President Trump in the 2024 presidential election and other key races last November. 

But even amid voter dissatisfaction with party leaders and disapproval with the party brand as a whole, one positive sign for Democrats has been the multiple victories they have achieved in the handful of elections this year.

Democrat Catelin Drey’s win in Iowa Senate District 1 by more than 10 points, as of the latest vote count, over Republican Christopher Prosch is just the latest in a string of Democratic electoral successes this year that is likely to give the party hope heading into the midterms.

The first one came in January in a neighboring state Senate district in Iowa, when Democrats flipped that seat from red to blue, just after Trump took office. They did the same in an equally Trump-friendly state Senate district in Pennsylvania in March.

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Since the White House press office selected reporters from five pro-Trump, partisan news outlets to ask the president questions during his televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday, readers will not be shocked to learn that they largely avoided subjects he would prefer not to talk about.

In fact, two of them went even further than that, using the opportunity to help Trump make his point about crime in Washington DC by sharing their own stories of being assaulted or harassed.

The first to speak, in what was obviously a pre-planned moment, was Iris Tao of the conspiratorial Epoch Times.

Tao’s outlet, which was founded by Chinese exiles affiliated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement that is repressed as a cult in China, has heavily promoted Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that China was responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I want to mention, you know about crime… we have a young lady here, Iris of Epoch Times,” Trump said, looked down at his briefing notes, where her name was written in large letters. “I heard you were very savagely mugged. Would you like to mention what happened?” he asked.

Tao then described the harrowing experience of being mugged at gunpoint outside her apartment building in January 2023, and struck in the face with a pistol by her attacker when she refused to hand over her phone.

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The Trump administration retaliated on Tuesday against some Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) staffers who signed an open letter of dissent about the agency’s leadership one day earlier, the Washington Post reports.

On Monday, about 180 current and former Fema staffers sent a letter to members of Congress and other officials, arguing the current leaders’ inexperience and approach harms Fema’s mission and could result in a disaster on the level of Hurricane Katrina.

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