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If you thought a single activist judge was going to stop the Trump administration from dismantling the bloated propaganda machine known as the US Agency for Global Media, you have not been paying attention. On Thursday, the White House announced that Sarah B. Rogers, currently serving as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, has been nominated to serve as CEO of USAGM. Deputy Secretary of State Mike Rigas will serve as Acting CEO until Rogers is confirmed by the Senate. And Kari Lake — the woman the establishment has been trying to sideline for years — is staying put as Deputy CEO, according to The Gateway Pundit.
This move is a direct counterpunch to last week’s ruling by Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who declared Lake’s appointment as Senior Advisor to the Acting CEO of USAGM “unconstitutional” and attempted to nullify every action she had taken at the agency, including reduction-in-force notices. The left celebrated that ruling like it was V-E Day. They should have known better. The Trump team does not retreat — it flanks.
The strategy here is elegant in its simplicity. Lake told The Gateway Pundit in a previous exclusive interview that her “ultimate goal” was to reduce USAGM down to zero and transfer its assets to the State Department. By installing Rogers — already a senior State Department official — as the new CEO, the administration is doing exactly that. The agency is being absorbed into the Department of State through its own leadership chain. The judge tried to block the bulldozer, so the administration simply built a new road around him.
And let us be clear about what USAGM has become. This is the agency that oversees Voice of America and other international broadcasting outlets — outlets that are supposed to represent American interests and values to the world. Instead, they have been staffed with activists who openly despise the administration they serve. The leaked audio tapes tell the whole story. Reporter Patsy Widakuswara was caught on tape siding with Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and characterizing the Trump administration’s lawful extradition of a foreign leader as “kidnapping.” She lamented the loss of VOA’s “independent reporting” — by which she meant reporting that actively undermined American foreign policy.
Then there is Jessica Jerreat, another USAGM employee caught on audio openly wrestling with whether she is “a journalist or an activist” and admitting she could not tell the difference. She expressed sympathy for colleagues with “immigration concerns” — a polite way of saying staffers who are personally invested in opposing the administration’s deportation efforts. These are not journalists. These are operatives embedded inside a government agency, drawing taxpayer salaries while working to sabotage the elected president’s agenda.
This is precisely why Lake was sent in, and it is precisely why the establishment fought so hard to remove her. The lawsuit that led to Judge Lamberth’s ruling was filed by six USAGM and Voice of America employees who had been placed on paid administrative leave. Paid leave — not fired, not deported, not imprisoned. Paid to stay home. And they still sued, because the real offense was not their treatment but the fact that someone was finally holding the agency accountable.
Lake responded to the ruling with the kind of fire her supporters have come to expect. “The American people gave President Trump a mandate to cut bloated bureaucracy, eliminate waste, and restore accountability to government,” she said. “An activist judge is trying to stand in the way of those efforts at USAGM. Judge Lamberth has a pattern of activist rulings — and this case is no different. We strongly disagree with this decision and will appeal.” And now, with Rogers stepping in as CEO and Lake remaining as Deputy, the appeal almost does not matter. The mission continues regardless.
What the American people are watching in real time is the difference between a government that governs and a bureaucracy that resists. The administrative state has spent decades insulating itself from democratic accountability, building layer upon layer of civil service protections that make it nearly impossible to fire anyone, no matter how openly they work against the public interest. Trump promised to drain the swamp. Lake is one of the people actually holding the bucket. Is it any wonder the swamp creatures are biting back?
The broader lesson here extends well beyond USAGM. Every federal agency is packed with employees who view their role not as serving the American people but as serving a permanent ideological agenda. The Trump administration’s willingness to restructure, reassign, and outmaneuver judicial roadblocks is the template for how a populist government survives in a system designed to destroy it. You cannot simply win the election. You have to win the bureaucratic war that follows — and that war is fought one agency, one appointment, and one flanking maneuver at a time.
Should taxpayer-funded agencies like USAGM be allowed to employ activists who openly work against the administration they serve, or is it time for a complete housecleaning?
Providence watches over the bold.
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