Washington: The Trump administration has abruptly suspended journalists from U.S.-funded broadcasters, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, ordered them to leave their offices and surrender equipment, and said critics have weakened the U.S. global media influence.

Hundreds of VOA’s journalists and other employees, Radio Asia, Free Europe Radio and other outlets received a weekend email saying they would be banned from their offices and should surrender to the news pass, phones and other devices issued by the office.

Trump, who has reviewed the U.S. aid agencies and education sector, issued an executive order on Friday listing the executive orders of the U.S. global media agencies as “the elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has identified are unnecessary.”

Kari Lake, a Trump supporter and former Arizona news host, lost a bid for the U.S. Senate and was charged with media agencies, who wrote in the media outlets she was supervised that the federal grant “no longer affects agency priorities.”

White House media official Harrison Fields simply wrote “goodbye” in 20 languages ​​in a less legalist tone in posts on X, a satirical jab of VOA’s multilingual coverage.

The head of European Freedom/Radio Radio, which began broadcasting to the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, called the cancellation of funds a “giant gift to the American enemy.”

Gift to China?

“Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese Communist Party leaders and dictators in Moscow and Minsk will celebrate the demise of RFE/RL in 75 years,” its president Stephen Capus said in a statement.

“Getting our opponents to win will make them stronger and the United States will become weaker,” he said.

Since the end of the Cold War, the US-funded media have repositioned themselves, abandoning many programs targeting new democracy Central and Eastern European countries and focusing on Russia and China.

Free Asia Radio, founded in 1996, sees its mission as providing uncensored reports to countries without free media, including China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam.

These stores have an editorial firewall, which has clear independent assurances despite funding from the U.S. government.

The policy has angered some people around Trump, who has long opposed the media, and in his first tenure, he suggested that U.S. government-funded media should promote his policies.