Lake later relinquished the position on Nov. 19, 2025. Lake took in that four-month time frame must be treated as “void,” including an Aug. 29, 2025, reduction in USAGM’s workforce.

Lamberth said Trump’s decision to have Lake lead the agency without Senate confirmation or the appropriate procedures required “an unlawful effort to transform Lake into the CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media in all but name.”

The Vacancies Act requires that an acting head must be the second senior officer of an agency, be appointed by the president with the Senate’s consent, or be a senior officer who had been at the agency before a vacancy arose.

Lamberth leaned heavily on the ruling by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals that similarly invalidated the appointment of Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey.

Ms. Lake claimed that she had not assumed the official title of acting chief executive of the media agency, but rather that the authority of the chief executive position had been delegated to her. 

Lamberth rejected her argument, writing that “allowing the president to circumvent Congress’s carefully crafted limitations” violates the Constitution.

Lake, a former television anchor who unsuccessfully ran for governor and a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, billed herself as a reformer who would fix what she has called the “most corrupt agency in Washington.”

“The American people gave President Trump a mandate to cut bloated bureaucracy, eliminate waste, and restore accountability to government,” Lake said in a statement on Saturday. “An activist judge is trying to stand in the way of those efforts at USAGM. … We strongly disagree with this decision and will appeal.”

If the decision from Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is upheld by higher courts, it would allow more than 1,000 journalists and support staff members at the news group to return to their jobs. 

“The judge’s ruling that Lake’s actions shall have no force or effect is a powerful step toward undoing the damage she has inflicted on this American institution,” wrote Voice of America’s White House bureau chief, Patsy Widakuswara, VOA press freedom editor Jessica Jerreat, and Kate Neeper, USAGM’s director of strategy and performance assessment.

Prior to Trump’s decision to close the agency and influence editorial decisions, Voice of America broadcasts were produced in 49 languages and had more than 360 million weekly listeners internationally, providing news services to foreign countries with limited press freedoms, including China, Russia, and Iran.

After Lamberth’s ruling Saturday, the named plaintiffs in the case said in a statement that they felt “vindicated and deeply grateful” for the decision, emphasizing their efforts to “restore V.O.A.’s global operations and ensure [they] continue to produce journalism, not propaganda,” after nearly a year since operations shuttered last March.