According to insiders, three Persian service journalists who stepped out for a cigarette break on Friday had their security badges seized and were barred from re-entering the office.

President Donald Trump’s administration has issued mass sack letters to over 600 staff members of the US-funded international broadcaster, Voice of America (VOA), effectively shutting down the platform that has delivered global news since World War II.

Layoff notices were sent on Friday to at least 639 employees, including journalists from VOA’s Persian-language service who were suddenly recalled from administrative leave last week to resume broadcasting to Iran following Israel’s military actions.

But the return was short-lived.

According to insiders, three Persian service journalists who stepped out for a cigarette break on Friday had their security badges seized and were barred from re-entering the office.

In total, over 1,400 workers, roughly 85 percent of the combined staff at VOA and its parent agency, the U.S. 

The Agency for Global Media has been dismissed since March, said Kari Lake, Trump’s senior adviser at the agency.

She justified the mass purge as part of a radical overhaul to dismantle what she described as a corrupt and inefficient structure.

“For decades, American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that’s been riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste,” Lake said in a press statement. “That ends now.”

Founded in the thick of World War II to counter Adolf Hitler’s propaganda, VOA began by broadcasting messages of democracy to Nazi Germany. 

It later became a strategic Cold War asset, pushing back against Soviet misinformation. Over the decades, it grew into a powerhouse of factual, multilingual journalism, especially in authoritarian regimes where freedom of the press is nonexistent.

But under Trump, that legacy appears to be deliberately erased.

Critics say the mass sackings are part of Trump’s wider ideological battle against independent media. The administration is already pushing to cut off funding to other public broadcasters like PBS and NPR, with a bill currently before Congress.

Most VOA staff had already been placed on administrative leave since March 15, effectively silencing their social media pages and radio output. 

Even three VOA journalists currently suing the administration over the agency's dismantling were not spared, each received a termination notice on Friday.

In April, SaharaReporters reported VOA’s mysterious blackout across Nigeria, Ghana, Niger, and other African nations. Broadcasts suddenly went off-air and were replaced with haunting music, sparking panic among listeners.

“People started calling in, worried that there had been a coup in America,” said Babangida Jibrin, a former journalist with VOA’s now-defunct Hausa-language service, in an interview. 

VOA Hausa had become a vital source of reliable news in Nigeria’s insurgency-plagued north, as well as in parts of Ghana, Cameroon, and Niger. Its shutdown has left a deep vacuum in regions where local journalism is heavily censored or co-opted by political powers.

“People are now cut off from the world, especially from critical international news,” said Moussa Jaharou, a distressed listener in southern Niger. He called the move a “deliberate silencing of the poor.”

With limited internet access in these rural communities, millions depended on VOA’s shortwave broadcasts to stay informed.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s widespread purging of federal workers has sparked outrage across the U.S. Over 1,100 protest rallies under the banner “Hands Off!” are set to take place in all 50 states this weekend. 

The protests, aimed at resisting Trump’s dismantling of public institutions, are reportedly in reaction to federal layoffs allegedly coordinated by his adviser and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

According to Yahoo News, more than 150 organisations, including Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the ACLU, and the Service Employees International Union, are backing the protests, which they say are part of a broader resistance against efforts to gut Social Security, Medicaid, public education, and now, global press freedom.

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