Cecilia Lei

Last year, Lake fired VOA's contractors and put more than 1,000 people on paid administrative leave.

But now her effort has been undone.

Recently, a federal judge ruled that Lake had been illegally running the agency responsible for VOA.

And there's another case to come.

A suit filed by VOA staffers on Monday claims that Lake did the very thing Trump criticized VOA for, spreading biased news.

The suit also alleges that VOA reporters were censored from reporting support for the son of the late Shah during Iranian anti-government protests in January.

And last month, VOA staffers told NPR that the outlet's Persian broadcasts parroted the Trump administration's language about the war.

The VOA has faced criticism during past administrations as well, and some question its very existence, saying the government shouldn't be in the business of funding news media.

But until recently, federally funded international media had broad bipartisan support.

Back in the 1950s, it was a young Ronald Reagan who joined a campaign urging the public to spend its, quote, truth dollars to support VOA's sister network, Radio Free Europe.

But times have changed.

The Republicans under Trump have become much more outwardly critical about the value of this kind of soft power and generally of established media.

Speaking to PBS last year, the VOA's director, Mike Abramowitz, defended his reporter's journalism and said VOA was still needed today.

But Folkenflik told us that doesn't really fit with the foreign policy strategy of the current administration.

Following the federal judge's ruling on Lake from earlier this month, dozens of VOA journalists are scheduled to return to work in the coming days.

The Trump administration indicated it would appeal and cited the cutbacks were part of its effort to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.

The 250-year history of the United States has been shaped in large part by immigration, people crossing oceans and borders to make new lives here.

Then last year, something different started happening.

Drew Hinshaw is a senior reporter with The Wall Street Journal.

He and his colleagues pulled together immigration statistics from dozens of countries and analyzed this remarkable trend.