Voice of America is off the rails. Consider the last few months under acting Director Yolanda Lopez’s tenure.

A former freelance VOA reporter now appears to have been a Russian spy . VOA Russian Service journalists have protested about VOA’s attempts to hire veterans of Putin’s propaganda outlets. More than a year into the Ukraine war, VOA Russian Service broadcasts last less than two hours per day on average.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, the former director of the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting, observed that “[w]ith Cuba’s help, Moscow has dominated the information warfare field all over Central and South America, transmitting three times as much government-sponsored news content as Voice of America and her sister networks do.”

So as Russia laps the United States in the information domain, what does Lopez do?

In February, I noted that Lopez had bragged in her weekly email to employees that she had traveled to various British universities to show VOA documentaries. Such travel seemed a curious use of money given how cash-strapped the Russia and Ukraine broadcast teams are.

Lopez does not care. Last month, she took to LinkedIn to brag about the documentaries VOA produces. Many of these films are good, but irrelevant to VOA’s core mission or intended audience.

Perhaps this is part of the problem. On Monday, VOA’s Daily Media Digest highlighted VOA journalists and their reports honored at the Chesapeake Associated Press Broadcasters Association Awards over the weekend. Congratulations to them, but VOA is not supposed to broadcast in the United States. So the honors simply raise more questions about whether Lopez and the favored colleagues to which she funnels cash are simply using the VOA budget as a slush fund for their own personal ambitions instead of seeking to fulfill VOA’s mission. Put another way, while From Yalta to Malta, VOA’s newest documentary exploring the personal friendships of Cold War leaders, may be interesting, it is a subject better suited for Netflix or Hulu than VOA.

Enough is enough. Prior to Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, future national security adviser Jake Sullivan argued that diplomacy rather than the military should be the tip of America’s foreign policy spear. Amanda Bennett, who, as director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is Lopez’s supervisor, appears, like Lopez, to be indifferent. Rather than observe partisan neutrality, she attends galas with top Biden administration officials in New York, attended the Summit for Democracy in the Netherlands, and has actively squandered the budget U.S. overseas broadcasting receives.

Accompanying photographs she distributed to USAGM staff with her posing with both Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, she claimed their endorsement: “In our conversations, we underscored what you already know: The crucial role USAGM plays in supporting press freedom and democracy for the hundreds of millions of people across the globe who depend on us.”

Unfortunately, under Bennett and Lopez, this is no longer true. Both show bizarre judgment and increasingly appear to engage in gross mismanagement. VOA should play a crucial role, and its audience should be in Moscow, not Maryland, and Lviv, not London. News must trump documentaries no matter how much Bennett and Lopez may cherish their New York galas and London junkets. After all, for Russian conscripts and Ukrainian freedom fighters, VOA’s traditional news is a matter of life and death. Its investment in documentaries makes as much sense as selling ski gear in the Sahara.

If the White House will not stop blatant fraud and abuse, it is time for Congress to step in and restore order and honor to VOA. Its journalists demand no less. As Russia, China, and Iran seek to sway a new generation, VOA mismanagement has become a national security issue.

Michael Rubin ( @mrubin1971 ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.