Voice of America Shutdown Benefits Russia, China: GOP Warns

The Voice of Amer­i­ca shut­down ben­e­fits Rus­sia Chi­na by cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for their pro­pa­gan­da net­works to fill the void left by dis­man­tled U.S. broad­cast­ing ser­vices. On 26 Octo­ber 2025, The New York Times report­ed that Repub­li­can law­mak­ers have warned the Trump admin­is­tra­tion that ceas­ing fed­er­al­ly fund­ed news oper­a­tions is ced­ing ground to adver­sar­i­al pro­pa­gan­da net­works mov­ing aggres­sive­ly into the vac­u­um. The arti­cle begins:

For near­ly two years, Voice of Amer­i­ca, a fed­er­al news agency ded­i­cat­ed to pro­ject­ing Amer­i­can val­ues around the world, pro­vid­ed inten­sive Per­sian-lan­guage cov­er­age of Israel’s war with Hamas. The ser­vice reg­u­lar­ly reached view­ers inside Iran, Hamas’s state spon­sor, with the kind of report­ing and expert analy­sis that Tehran typ­i­cal­ly sup­press­es. But Ira­ni­ans who tuned to V.O.A. in June to learn about Israel’s attack on their coun­try got some­thing dif­fer­ent: a two-hour live broad­cast of the U.S. mil­i­tary pro­ces­sion in Wash­ing­ton that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion held to cel­e­brate the 250th anniver­sary of the Amer­i­can army. “U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has invit­ed Amer­i­cans to par­tic­i­pate in this once-in-a-life­time cel­e­bra­tion that is free to the pub­lic,” an anchor declared in Per­sian. It was a strik­ing moment for the sto­ried news agency, which was found­ed in 1942 to fight Nazi pro­pa­gan­da and has won dozens of jour­nal­ism awards for report­ing around the world — but has been tar­get­ed for destruc­tion by Pres­i­dent Trump.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/us/politics/under-trump-voice-of-america-is-down-but-not-out.html

Key Points

• Repub­li­can law­mak­ers warn that elim­i­nat­ing fed­er­al­ly fund­ed news groups with­out a robust replace­ment is reck­less and short­sight­ed as it cedes ground to adver­sar­i­al propaganda.
• Russ­ian and Chi­nese pro­pa­gan­da net­works have moved aggres­sive­ly to fill the vac­u­um cre­at­ed by the shut­down of Voice of Amer­i­ca and oth­er U.S. broad­cast­ing services.
• Voice of Amer­i­ca pre­vi­ous­ly broad­cast in 49 lan­guages to 360 mil­lion peo­ple week­ly, while three oth­er fed­er­al­ly fund­ed news groups col­lec­tive­ly reached around 150 mil­lion peo­ple weekly.
• Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Young Kim stat­ed that the news orga­ni­za­tions pro­vide cred­i­ble local lan­guage report­ing that builds trust with audi­ences in regions tar­get­ed by Russ­ian and Chi­nese influ­ence operations.

Trump Administration Dismantles International Broadcasting as Russia and China Expand Foreign Influence Operations

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s March 2025 exec­u­tive order dis­man­tled U.S. inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ing oper­a­tions, plac­ing over 1,300 Voice of Amer­i­ca jour­nal­ists on admin­is­tra­tive leave and ter­mi­nat­ing grants to Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty. The action halt­ed broad­casts that had served audi­ences in coun­tries with restrict­ed press free­dom for decades, gut­ting democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion agen­cies and elim­i­nat­ing the U.S. Agency for Glob­al Medi­a’s fund­ing. RT’s edi­tor-in-chief cel­e­brat­ed the move as an “awe­some deci­sion,” while for­mer Chi­nese state media edi­tor Hu Xijin called the paral­y­sis “real­ly grat­i­fy­ing” and hoped it would prove “irre­versible.”

The dis­man­tling enabled unprece­dent­ed expan­sion by author­i­tar­i­an media net­works. Rus­si­a’s Sput­nik opened new offices in Ethiopia with plans for South Africa and Tan­za­nia, while RT launched bureaus in Alge­ria and announced an India office. Turkey’s TRT start­ed broad­cast­ing in Soma­lia as part of Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan’s “Cen­tu­ry of Turkey” vision. Beyond vis­i­ble oper­a­tions, Rus­sia dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased influ­ence spend­ing, with Rossotrud­nich­est­vo expand­ing its bud­get from $77 mil­lion to $1.5 bil­lion annu­al­ly to cap­i­tal­ize on USAID’s dis­man­tling. Russ­ian train­ing pro­grams for African jour­nal­ists dis­missed Ukrain­ian civil­ian mas­sacres and Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons attacks as “fake news.”

Chi­na strate­gi­cal­ly shift­ed from gov­ern­ment mes­sag­ing to ampli­fy­ing social media influ­encers and pri­vate entre­pre­neurs, then using state media to boost their con­tent glob­al­ly. This approach proved effec­tive in Africa and South­east Asia, where U.S. broad­cast­ers had pro­vid­ed coun­ternar­ra­tives to extrem­ist groups. Chi­na Radio Inter­na­tion­al took over Radio Aus­trali­a’s Pacif­ic fre­quen­cies, while Chi­na Media Group expand­ed con­tent deliv­ery to more than 130 coun­tries in 44 lan­guages, with over $6.6 bil­lion invest­ed in glob­al media outlets.

The Euro­pean Union respond­ed with $6.2 mil­lion in emer­gency sup­port for Radio Free Europe, while Britain cre­at­ed a soft-pow­er coun­cil to address Amer­i­ca’s aban­doned com­mu­ni­ca­tions role. Fed­er­al judges issued pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tions block­ing some actions, but legal chal­lenges faced appel­late set­backs. The vac­u­um con­tin­ues expand­ing as Rus­sia sup­plies his­to­ry text­books jus­ti­fy­ing Ukraine’s inva­sion to schools world­wide while train­ing for­eign jour­nal­ists at RT and Sputnik.

Exter­nal References:
— Amer­i­ca’s rivals cel­e­brat­ed as Trump set out to dis­man­tle its glob­al influ­ence — The New York Times
— What is Voice of Amer­i­ca and why Trump is dis­man­tling the broad­cast­er — PBS NewsHour
— As Trump silences Voice of Amer­i­ca, Rus­sia and Chi­na seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reshape Africa’s news ecosys­tem — Nie­man Jour­nal­ism Lab

 Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.