Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the U.S. Agency for Global Media to end all of its non-statutory functions.
The head of a pro-American Middle East broadcaster told his staff over the weekend that the Trump administration’s decision to put the nonprofit’s federal funding on the chopping block is “a blow for freedom-loving, pro-American people around the world.”
In a Sunday afternoon email to his staff obtained by National Review, Jeffrey Gedmin, the new president of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, or MBN, said the administration’s decision to defund the organization and other outlets under the umbrella of the United States Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, is “bewildering.”
“MBN’s future is in jeopardy,” Gedmin wrote in the email. “Yesterday’s perplexing and misguided decision by [USAGM senior adviser] Kari Lake was a blow for freedom-loving, pro-American people around the world.”
“Our journalism counters anti-American narratives,” he continued. “MBN is a thorn in the side of American adversaries. Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and other terror groups detest us. Anti-American tyrants ruling Iran loathe us.”
“This is no time for America to disarm,” Gedmin wrote.
Gedmin’s note came on the heels of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Friday that called for “the non-statutory components and functions” of seven government entities, including USAGM, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
The president specifically took aim at Voice of America, a USAGM broadcaster tasked with reaching audiences in authoritarian countries like Iran and China. In a press release he said his order “will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”
At one point Voice of America refused to refer to Hamas fighters as terrorists and has sanitized some of their atrocities, and its reporters have been accused of expressing an anti-Trump bias. Over the weekend, some Voice of America radio frequencies in Asia and the Middle East went off the air or started playing only music, according to the New York Times.
On Saturday, MBN leaders received a letter from Lake alerting them that their grant agreement also was being terminated.
“Ms. Lake . . . informed us we are no longer worth funding,” Gedmin wrote to his staff, adding that the Trump ally has so far “declined to meet with me. She’s not visited our operation. I realize she’s only been on the job just a couple weeks. I’m certain, though, that a first-hand look at MBN could only impress and convince.”
In January, National Review wrote about concerns raised by a media watchdog that MBN’s Alhurra network had on several occasions provided a platform for pro-Palestinian terrorism supporters and repeatedly used anti-Israel language in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Gedmin called the complaints “legitimate” and “disturbing” and vowed to make changes at the network, which he said was “badly broken” when he took over last year.
But Gedmin — a former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and a one-time scholar with the center-right American Enterprise Institute — stood by the network’s broad mission of being both an independent and pro-American voice in the Middle East.
Andrea Levin, executive director of the watchdog, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, told National Review that since raising their concerns they’ve had dialogue with Alhurra leaders that was “fruitful and, in our judgement, reflected a professional and accountable approach on their part.”
“This is a rarity in the landscape of publicly-owned, Arabic-speaking outlets in the West, usually dominated by the dismissiveness and gaslighting that we see from players like BBC Arabic and France 24 Arabic,” Levin said in an email. “Of course, mouthpieces of authoritarian regimes like Aljazeera are even less committed to basic journalistic standards of accuracy and impartiality.”
In an interview with National Review, Gedmin said MBN’s Alhurra network was still broadcasting in the Middle East as of Monday morning and that he and his team are still trying to get clarity from USAGM about what is expected of them. The nonprofit’s funding for the rest of the fiscal year was just approved last week through Congress’s continuing resolution. Gedmin said that Lake’s direction may be “contrary to the law.”
“Our lawyers,” he said, “consider that the termination of the grant agreement is not only in conflict with congressional intent, because we’re funded through the CR, but also . . . one can only cancel the grant agreement if we are in material breach. And A., we’re not. And B., they didn’t allege so.”
Gedmin said cutting funding for pro-American overseas media and reducing the nation’s “soft power” operations is “an unforced error.” He said American adversaries, including China, Iran, and Russia “are in the soft power game.” And anti-American actors and media in the Middle East, including Al Jazeera “will see this as a very positive development because America is stepping off the field and leaving . . . the goal unattended,” he said.
The “honest bad actors” in the Middle East “are celebrating and wishing for a hasty departure” of Alhurra,” Gedmin said, while others in the region see the likely rollback of the network as more evidence that “the Americans are feckless and not reliable.”
Over the weekend, Middle Eastern X users called USAGM staffers “America’s mercenaries and dogs” and compared Trump’s pull-back on global media to the U.S.’s abandonment of its allies in Afghanistan. “This is America, it respects no one at all,” one X user wrote.
When Gedmin took over last year, MBN had about a $100 million budget. Since then, the nonprofit has closed bureaus; let go about 200 employees; imposed freezes on travel, new hires, pay raises, and the acquisition of new equipment; and has even cut back on the number of security guards they employ and their cleaning services, Gedmin told staff. They’ve also been looking to move out of their Springfield, Va., headquarters for a smaller space to reduce their rent, he said.
Gedmin said he’s “so mindful of the generosity of the American taxpayer,” but said MBN’s entire operation, which reaches millions of people every day, costs less every year than two Apache helicopters. “It’s real money, but it’s not breaking the bank,” he said.
“It’s filling a gap that no one else tends to, tackles, or takes care of,” he said of content that is credible and independent, but is also “absolutely aligned with the foreign policy interests and objectives of the United States of America.”
Gedmin said he’s also worried about his employees.
“People feel very anxious, very insecure,” he said. “If you’re in Syria and you work for Alhurra — or Egypt or Lebanon or elsewhere — you’re less safe today than you were on Friday night.”