The U.S. Agency for Global Media—the bureaucracy that runs the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio y Televisión Martí, among other operations—might be about to die. On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an order to shut it down "to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law." In a follow-up statement Saturday, the White House derided the Voice of America as "radical propaganda" and listed several stories on the network that the administration found objectionable.
Trump has been complaining about the Voice of America since his first term, and last month Envoy for Special Missions Richard Grenell declared it and Radio Free Europe a "relic of the past." But most of the administration's criticism has been focused on these outlets' content, not their existence, and by some reports the agency has reacted by cracking down on material critical of the president. So it was fair to fear that we were watching a version of the playbook the GOP keeps using on domestic public broadcasters: You threaten to defund them, and then they protect themselves by firing some figures who conservatives don't like and/or hiring some that they do. Maybe the Voice of America isn't really on the chopping block, you might have thought. Maybe it's just getting a MAGA makeover.
Friday's move is the strongest sign yet that what's happening at this agency is not merely a purge of programming the president dislikes. More than three decades after the end of the Cold War, we might finally be shutting down the Cold War broadcasting apparatus.
