Stephen Hawkins and Patsy Widakuswara analyze the Republican Party's likely midterm losses despite claims of Trump's consistency, then detail VOA's March 2025 crisis where an executive order dismantled USAGM, leaving staff on leave with confiscated equipment. Although a judge denied a stay, forcing a Monday return, missing badges and resources hinder operations within the $200 million budget, threatening journalistic independence as adversaries escalate propaganda efforts while new leadership faces scrutiny over balancing facts against administration mandates. [Automatically generated summary]
JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, they're both saying the same thing, which is that the president is consistent, the president has made himself clear and is unwavering.
What are the objectives?
Lastly, for you, the midterm elections are in November.
The president won't be on the ballot, but his team has said they're treating it as if he is.
Do you think this could have an impact for how Republicans in Congress fare in their reelection bids?
88% of the time since World War II, the President's party has lost some power in Congress during midterm elections.
14 out of 16 elections.
It's happened in this century only once.
It was after September 11th, George W. Bush's Republican Party was able to gain some seats.
So from a statistical standpoint, independent of the context, President Trump is likely with the Republican Party to lose seats in the House.
We'll see what happens in the Senate.
How badly this or positively this affects his popularity probably won't change that outcome, which is that it's likely the Republican Party will lose the House.
Stephen Hawkins, he's the Global Director of Research at Moore and Common.
Thanks so much for coming in.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
And that's all for this morning's program.
Join us tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern Time for another edition of Washington Journal.
We are going to be speaking to Patty Wittekeswara.
She is the White House Bureau Chief for the Voice of America.
Patsy, welcome to the program.
Thank you for having me.
Okay, so get us up to date on first, since Voice of America does not air in the United States, tell us who you are and how the organization is funded.
Well, we've been funded by your tax dollars for the past 83 years enjoying bipartisan support from both parties.
We are an international broadcasting organization, and we broadcast in 49 languages around the world in 100 plus countries.
And we have about 360 million weekly global audience.
That is until March 2025, when President Trump put out an executive order dismantling essentially our parent network, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
And then a day later, we were all put on admin leave.
So my colleagues and I fought in court.
And last night, the judge just gave us one of the best news that we've heard so far.
We've had fantastic news these past two weeks from the court.
But last night, basically, the judge ruled that the order, the request for the government to stay his order to bring us back to work has been denied.
So that means beginning on Monday, the government, the USAGM, has to start enacting a plan for us to return to work.
There's hundreds of my colleagues who cannot wait to go back to work, to return to our mandate to tell America's story to the world through factual, balance, and comprehensive journalism.
So Patsy, this was during the Doge era that there was about 1,000 journalists that were laid off from Voice of America, placed on leave, and eventually laid off.
So what does that mean for Monday?
Are you going back to work or has that decision been stayed for now for another two weeks?
No, the government, the judge ruled last night that basically he denies their motion for a stay.
So that means they have to start bringing us back to work.
Now, the government did say that it is logistically impossible to bring all hundreds of us back to work on Monday because, you know, we don't have badges.
They confiscated our ID badges.
They confiscated our laptop phones, equipment, you know, turned off all the satellites.
So this is a huge waste of taxpayers' money.
I mean, we understand the logistical challenge of bringing us back to work, but why did you have to take away all our equipment in the first place?
Why did you have to put us staying at home for a whole year while being paid on admin leave when there is actual work to do?
So while we are grateful for this decision and we are looking forward to going back to work, we do regret the fact that this is going to be a big waste of taxpayers' money.
And now bringing us back is going to take money and going to take some time.
But what's going to be even more difficult is to regain the trust and the audience share of VOA around the world.
How do we go back to getting the 360 million weekly global audience that has not heard anything from us largely for the past year?
So that's going to be the bigger challenge.
So going back to the money part, Patsy, the actual budget of the Voice of America, is it's about 200 million.
How much is it exactly?
Yeah, it's about $200 million.
That's FY 2026.
That's a little bit less, about 20% less than previous years.
But if you calculate that, that's still about $1.50 per American taxpayer per year.
So think about that for less than a third of your cup of cappuccino for a whole year, you can fund good journalism that helps not only bring free press around the world, which of course is foundational to democracy.
And I believe something that all Americans should support, but it's also supporting this formidable tool of American soft power, bringing information around the world, bringing the U.S. narrative in the global information space.
And we haven't done that for the past year.
And in the meantime, our adversaries, such as Russia and China, is actually ramping up their propaganda efforts.
So this is something that is the next phase of our fight for us to continue producing journalism and not propaganda.
So Voice of America has a Persian service.
And my question to you is, have they been able to continue broadcasting into Iran?
Is that signal getting to people?
What do you know about that?
Yeah, so my colleagues from the Persian service have been brought back for these past couple of months.
And they have been broadcasting television as well as radio.
But, you know, they really are a shell of their former self.
I mean, all of us are.
This was a functioning news organization.
It's not perfect.
I don't think any organization is perfect.
But then, you know, Kerry Lake and USAGM basically smashed it on the president's orders.
So they have been producing limited broadcasting.
I don't exactly know how, whether they are reaching the people of Iran, but it's very difficult because they're operating on a skeleton crew.
They do not have the resources that we would normally have.
They have not been able to send reporters in Iran or anywhere in the region.
We don't have a standards editor.
And don't forget that these are my colleagues who are operating under pressure, knowing that the administration may be looking over their shoulder.
And that is the biggest challenge for us to make sure that we as journalists will be able to continue to do journalism and not be worried about reporting whether it pleases the administration or not, because that is not our mandate according to that.
Patsy, do you know how many Iranians are watching or listening to Voice of America right now?
Not right now.
I mean, I have no access to any of that information.
I've been shut out for the whole year.
And again, you know, there are parts of the U.S. Agency for Global Media that does all of that, the research and then the making sure that signals gets passed through and all of that.
But those people have also been on leave for the past year.
So it's unclear whether the Iranian people are receiving the kind of journalism that we would have been producing.
And if you look at the VOA Persian website, you see that a lot of the coverage largely reflects the administration's point of view.
This goes back to my earlier point of they do not have, my colleagues do not have the resources to produce journalism.
Now, if you think about it, the reason why people around the world turn to VOA is because they know that we will produce, give them straight-up news and not the administration's point of view, not just the administration's point of view.
And so that is also a big reason why we need to rebuild our reputation to bring our audience back.
And Patsy, finally, the New York Times is reporting that Newsmax director Chris Wallace was named as VOA's next deputy director.
How will the Voice of America fare under his leadership, do you think?
Well, there's a few people that's been put in place, not just the deputy director, but also, you know, acting CEO and also the Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, will be nominated as the new CEO.
I'm going to say that my co-plaintives and I, my colleagues and I, I myself personally especially, I'm going to withhold judgment on any of the new leadership.
What we would expect is that, you know, anybody, whether it's in leadership or anyone who works for Voice of America, we are governed by the same set of rules and the same set of laws that govern our mandate.
And we expect the leadership to also follow that mandate, which is to tell America's story objectively and factually.
Patsy Wida Caswara, Voice of America's White House Bureau Chief, thanks so much for joining us today.
Democrats Watching Republicans Live00:01:46
My pleasure.
Thank you.
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