Trump Administration Pays $1.6 Million a Week to Keep 420 VOA Staffers on Paid Leave, Inspector General Finds

More than a year after the Trump administration first moved to dismantle Voice of America, taxpayers are still paying an estimated $1.6 million a week to keep 420 of its staffers sitting on administrative leave, according to a State Department inspector general report published this week and reported by the Washington Post.

The figure comes from July payroll numbers. It's the clearest accounting yet of what the shutdown fight has actually cost. The inspector general found that the administration never ran a detailed analysis of the impact or cost before making the cuts.

How we got here

The push to gut VOA's parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was led by Kari Lake, who called the agency a "giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer" and canceled its building lease outright. A federal judge later ruled Lake had been illegally acting as the agency's CEO and struck down her mass layoff plan. The Trump administration has since nominated Sarah B. Rogers, a State Department official, to lead USAGM, while she keeps her existing job as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

That dual-hat arrangement hasn't been challenged in court the way Lake's tenure was, but it means the agency overseeing hundreds of stranded employees is being run, for now, by someone splitting time with another full-time State Department post.

The fair case for the cuts, and the problem with how they were made

Lake's underlying argument deserves a fair hearing: VOA has long drawn criticism, including from conservatives, as a bloated, taxpayer-funded outlet whose news judgment sometimes looked indistinguishable from state-run propaganda critics say leans left. Shrinking or restructuring it isn't inherently unreasonable, and plenty of government watchdogs across the spectrum have flagged USAGM's budget over the years.

The problem, according to the inspector general's own findings, isn't the goal. It's the execution. A judge found the layoff process itself unlawful, which is why 420 people are collecting paychecks to do nothing instead of either working or being lawfully separated. The result is $1.6 million a week landing in legal limbo because the administration tried to move fast without the paperwork, or the cost analysis, to back it up.

This isn't an isolated case of agency money sitting frozen amid a legal fight either. The administration's parallel moves this week to withhold $1.4 billion in National Science Foundation funds and cancel another $810 million through a pocket rescission show a pattern of aggressive funding cuts landing in court before they land in savings.

Also happening this week

President Trump is scheduled to hold a second Texas rally within a week on Wednesday, part of a Republican push to shore up vulnerable seats ahead of the 2026 midterms. A prediction market tracked by Vera currently puts Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico at a 60% chance of beating Republican Ken Paxton, with Republicans given a 38% chance, reflecting Talarico's narrow polling lead and a Democratic edge on the generic congressional ballot. Whether a second Trump visit in one week moves that number is an open question that won't be answered until new polling comes in.

On the Korean peninsula, tensions tied to a land mine blast at the Demilitarized Zone remain unresolved. Seoul is reviewing "all possible measures" in response, according to a senior South Korean official cited in reporting compiled by retired Army Special Forces Colonel David Maxwell. North Korean official Kim Yo-jong has rejected blame for the blast and mocked Seoul's calls to ease tensions. Separately, South Korean President Lee has warned of "additional measures" if Ukraine does not apologize over a dispute involving the disclosure of a North Korean POW transfer, an unusual three-way diplomatic friction point between Seoul, Pyongyang, and Kyiv that has no resolution yet.

None of these threads are connected to each other. They're simply what landed on the same news day. The VOA bill, though, keeps running whether anyone's watching or not, and there's no indication from the inspector general's report of when the legal standoff over those 420 jobs will actually end.