An appeals court action on Wednesday is holding up $12 million in April funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
“By a 2–1 vote … a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a stay pending appeal of the April 29 district court order requiring the U.S. Agency for Global Media to immediately disburse RFE/RL’s congressionally appropriated funds for April,” the organization said in a press release.
RFE/RL is trying to fight off the Trump administration’s actions to defund it. It said it has filed an emergency petition asking the full court of appeals for the D.C. circuit to reverse the panel’s stay.
It quoted President/CEO Stephen Capus saying, “[T]his delay means RFE/RL needs to continue reducing staff and programming. Every day without our congressionally appropriated funds, we’re losing more of our audiences to the state-sponsored propaganda networks of China, Russia and Iran, who are eagerly filling the information vacuum the U.S. is needlessly and recklessly leaving behind.”
RFE/RL in March sued USAGM for refusing to disburse congressionally-appropriated funds for the period March 1 to Sept. 30 of this year. A district court judge in April had granted a temporary restraining order that would allow the April funding to proceed. The latest action pauses that.
In March, USAGM Senior Advisor Kari Lake said that “waste, fraud and abuse run rampant” in USAGM. She said then that USAGM “would continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview and shed everything that is not statutorily required” and that the actions being taken affected its grantees as well. In the most recent full-year budget, according to the suit, Congress appropriated $857.2 million for USAGM, of which $142.2 million was allocated for RFE/RL.
