Associated Press
Growing up in the former Soviet Union, Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez’s father and grandparents would listen to Voice of America with their ears pressed to the radio, trying to catch words through the government’s radio jamming.
The U.S.-funded news service was instrumental in helping them understand what was happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain, before they moved to the United States in the 1970s.
“It was a window into another world,” Spivakovsky-Gonzalez said. “They looked to it as a sort of a beacon of freedom. They were able to imagine a different world from the one they were living in.”
When Spivakovsky-Gonzalez and his family heard of President Donald Trump’s attempts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media — the agency that oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia –- he said it was a “gut punch.”
The first months of the second Trump administration have delivered blow after blow to American efforts to promote democracy abroad and pierce the information wall of authoritarian governments through programs that had been sustained over decades by presidents of both political parties.
The new administration has decimated the Agency for Global Media, restructured the State Department to eliminate a global democracy office and gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, which just last year launched an initiative to try to halt democratic backsliding across the globe. In all, the moves represent a retrenchment from the U.S. role in spreading democracy beyond its borders.
“The United States has historically been the leading power in spreading democracy globally. Despite different administrations, that has remained the case –- until now,” said Staffan Lindberg, a political science professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
David Salvo, managing director for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, said promoting democracy abroad has been “a pillar of American foreign policy in the last 50 years” as a means of ensuring more stable, peaceful relationships with other countries, reducing the threat of conflict and war, and fostering economic cooperation.
Yet among Trump’s early actions was targeting democracy programs through the State Department and USAID, which had launched a new global democracy initiative at the tail end of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency. The Treasury Department halted funding to the National Endowment for Democracy, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in April he would shutter a State Department office that had a mission to build “more democratic, secure, stable, and just societies.”
Funding cuts have hit the National Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and U.S. nonprofits that have worked for decades “to inject resources into environments so that civil society and democratic actors can try to effect change for the better,” including through bolstering unstable democracies against autocrats, Salvo said.
Whether global democracy programs are worth funding was central to a hearing Thursday held by a U.S. House Foreign Affairs subcommittee as Rep. Maria Salazar, a Florida Republican, repeatedly asked how to “ensure our return on investment is really high.”
About 1.2% of the federal budget went to foreign aid in the 2023 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center.
“I understand the committee is interested in how we can improve … and get back to basics,” Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey and assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under President Barack Obama, told lawmakers. “The problem is the administration is eliminating the basics right now.”
Uzra Zeya, who leads the international nonprofit Human Rights First after serving in the Biden State Department, said it was “heartbreaking and alarming” to watch the U.S. essentially dismantle its democracy and human rights programs.
“The potential long-term impacts are devastating for U.S. national security and prosperity,” she said.
For more than 80 years, VOA and its related outlets have delivered news across the world, including to more than 427 million people every week in 49 languages, according to a 2024 internal report. The broadcaster began during World War II to provide Germans with news, even as Nazi officials attempted to jam its signals. The Soviet Union and China attempted to silence its broadcasts during the Cold War. Iranian and North Korean governments have also tried to block access to VOA for decades.
But the most successful attempt to silence VOA has been through its own government. It was effectively shut down in March through an executive order.
Lisa Brakel, a 66-year-old retired librarian in Temperance, Michigan, said VOA was a “mainstay” when she was a music teacher in Kuwait in the 1980s. She and her colleagues would listen together in the apartment complex where the American teachers were housed, using it as a way to stay up-to-date with U.S. news.
“When I saw the news, I thought, ‘No, they can’t shut this down. Too many people depend on that,’” Brakel said. “As a librarian, any cuts to free access to information deeply concern me.”
The broadcaster’s future remains in flux after a federal appellate court paused a ruling that would have reversed its dismantling. This was just a day after journalists were told they would soon return to work after being off the air for almost two months. Even if they are allowed back, it’s not clear the mission would be the same. This past week, the Trump administration agreed to use the conservative and heavily pro-Trump media network OAN’s feed on VOA and other services.
In Asia, dismantling Radio Free Asia would mean losing the world’s only independent Uyghur language news service, closing the Asia Fact Check Lab as it reports on misinformation from the Chinese Community Party, and curbing access to information in countries such as China, North Korea and Myanmar that lack free and independent media, the broadcaster’s president, Bay Fang, said in a statement.
“Their invaluable work is part of RFA’s responsibility to uphold the truth so that dictators and despots don’t have the last word,” Fang wrote in May in The New York Times.
Experts who monitor global democracy said the information gap created by the administration will embolden U.S. competitors such as Russia and China, which already are at work trying to shape public opinion.
Barbara Wejnert, a political sociologist at the University at Buffalo, who studies global democracies, said diplomatic efforts through U.S. broadcasters and democracy nonprofits helped precipitate a “rapid increase in democratizing countries” in the late 20th century.
“Especially today when the truth is distorted and people don’t trust governments, spreading the notion of freedom and democracy through media is even more vital,” she said.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
18 comments
Mylie Skinner
May 11, 2025 at 8:56 am
Great information shared.. really enjoyed reading this post thank you author for sharing this post .. appreciated
Earl Pitts "TRUTH IN MEDIA EXPERT" American
May 11, 2025 at 9:50 am
Mylie, please read my, Earl Pitts “TRUTH IN MEDIA EXPERT” American’s All Critical Truth In Media Warning below.
I just hope I was not too late to save you and your Beautiful family.
Earl Pitts “TRUTH IN MEDIA EXPERT” American
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May 11, 2025 at 6:05 pm
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GeeWoo
May 11, 2025 at 9:13 am
What ever. As a 30+ year Foreign Policy veteran, we took our eye of promoting Democracy in the early 2010s. At the same time, we took our focus off of America First, and went Woke First at all costs.
Honey, I Shrunk the Economy
May 11, 2025 at 10:01 am
That tranny stuff’s got you tied up in knots. Even the people at Fox are realizing this guy is a disaster. Did that woke stuff crash the world economy? Did a previous president ever sell Bibles or bitcoin to enrich himself? Instead of listening to qualified experts (like your 30+ years experience) he surrounds himself with bootlickers and listens to Laura Loomer.
Foghorn Leghorn
May 11, 2025 at 10:14 am
The list of Tesla firebombers, ICE detention center crashers, Hamas supporters, illegal aliens, defund the police, men playing women’s sports, and on and on is very very lengthy.
Happy Mothers Day
May 11, 2025 at 10:27 am
I dont know, Ed. Watching Americans attack the Capitol building was unique awful. Certainly cant equate it with the men and women sports nightmare you are suffering with. Maybe you werent around, but in the late ’60s cities were burning down over race riots and Vietnam and battles over civil rights. All of those people in the streets had legitimate reasons to be angry, not legitimate to vandalize. But they werent gaslit to action by a bankrupt casino owning conman.
EARL PITTS AMERICAN
May 11, 2025 at 6:03 pm
Excuse me [Happy Mothers Day] poster, we have tracked your IP Address and are investigating you and your family for “Agrivated Dook 4 Brains Leftism.
EARL PITTS AMERICAN
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May 11, 2025 at 9:31 am
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Earl Pitts "TRUTH IN MEDIA EXPERT" American
May 11, 2025 at 9:46 am
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We interupt your mornting read to advise the above artical is an A. P. artical. As such it is full of “Dook 4 Brains Leftist Propaganda”.
Please gather your family to a safe spot in your home and explaine the dangers of A. P. Propaganda.
We are now returning you to your regular mornting routine.
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The above warning was provided courtsey of The Earl Pitts American Fan Club,
Earl Pitts “TRUTH IN MEDIA EXPERT” American
All Americans Everywhere
May 11, 2025 at 9:56 am
Thank you, Earl,
You just save over a million Americans from dangerous high levels of propaganda.
Americans Everywhere
I Alone Can Win the Golf Tournament
May 11, 2025 at 10:18 am
Yes, now we can all go back to crying about the stolen 2020 election and go back and break all the windows we missed.
Larry Gillis, Director-at-Large, Libertarian Party of Florida
May 11, 2025 at 10:14 am
GOOD LUCK, OF COURSE, BUT NO MORE ENTANGLEMENTS FOR US:
They’ll get our thoughts and prayers, of course, but that’s about it.
Let them identify their own problems and address their own problems. More specifically, the Libertarian national platform says in pertinent part:
“3.3 International Affairs
American foreign policy should emphasize peace with all nations, entangling alliances with none. We would end the current U.S. government policies of foreign intervention including military and economic aid; tariffs; economic sanctions; and regime change. We recognize the right of all people to resist tyranny and defend themselves and their rights. We condemn the use of force, and especially the use of terrorism, against the innocent, regardless of whether such acts are committed by governments or by political or revolutionary groups.”
Michael K
May 11, 2025 at 12:06 pm
The global light of American democracy and freedom dimmed when then-President Trump refused to accept his electoral loss and instigated a violent attack on the US capital – as the world watched in horror.
Four years later, American greatness has been replaced by grift and greed; our moral high ground and human decency replaced by meanness, bigotry and cruelty, and our Constitution and rule of law replaced by petty vindictiveness and lawless movement towards autocracy.
Decades of global alliances and trust have been shattered, with the global economy suffering great damage because of one very selfish tyrant who is destroying our nation from within – aided by a weak Republican Congress terrified to do their job.
Foghorn Leghorn
May 11, 2025 at 12:13 pm
Violent attack? Who was killed that day? Oh the insurrection and toppling of the US Government by a bunch of people armed with American Flags, cell phones and back packs. Yes these people were going to topple the most powerful military in the world.
Bill
May 11, 2025 at 12:57 pm
It’s a sad development and one that will take decades to recover from but I’m sure the Chinese will step up though seeing as we’re playing checkers and they’re playing go.
Likewise, I’m sure trump will be happy in his new 747 as well. Those Saudi’s sure know how to gift. Luckily, trump paused the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act so he can accept it.
Michael K
May 11, 2025 at 6:21 pm
More than 67,000 MAGA hat-wearing suckerss foolishly bought Trump meme coins and lost their shirts – while Trump made millions off the poor rubes. His trip to the Middle East is not for peace – it’s for a Trump piece of the action as his spawn are working on real estate deals and more cryptocurrency corruption.
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May 11, 2025 at 6:07 pm
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Go ON my ProFILE