President Donald Trump has issued an executive order that will dismantle Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and other US state media outlets. A press release from the White House said that the outlets have adopted an increasingly progressive agenda. 

On Friday, the President signed an executive order instructing “the non-statutory components and functions of the following governmental entities shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” It continues, “And such entities shall reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”

The United States Agency for Global Media and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars were among the seven agencies facing closure. The US Agency for Global Media runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Free Asia. 

In a press release, the White House quoted long-time Voice of America staffer Dan Robinson who claimed the outlet had adopted a progressive bias. “I have monitored the agency’s bureaucracy along with many of its reporters and concluded that it has essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias aligned with partisan national media,” he said. “It has sought to avoid accountability for violations of journalistic standards and mismanagement.”

Trump recently appointed Keri Lake as the head of Voice of America. The Washington Post expects the executive order to lead to 3,500 employees of the state media outlets to be laid off. 

The USAGM outlets are not allowed by law to broadcast in the US because they are Washington-funded propaganda. The outlets were founded during WWII or the Cold War to spread information in nations deemed enemies of the US.