The MAGA Loyalist Poised to Control US Foreign Broadcasting
Sarah Rogers has been branded a free speech champion. Her record tells a different story.
PICTURE, IF YOU WILL, a person who has cheered the both barring of researchers from the United States based on their speech and the dismantling of an office that fought foreign influence.
A political appointee who appeared alongside an extreme UK politician who pushed “progressive eugenics”—and considered giving groups affiliated with him US government funding.
A person who likened government action against the non-consensual deepfake nudification of women and girls to a “Russia-style ban.”
Someone so hell bent on owning the libs they instructed the State Department to build an internet portal that would bypass other countries’ internet laws and allow users to see illegal content, including neo-Nazi content and hate speech.
That person is Sarah Rogers, who currently serves as the Trump Administration’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Though she has been described in multiple outlets as a “free speech crusader” (see here, here, and here), her actions tell a different story: she is on a free speech crusade for MAGA and its far-right allies alone, not for those who criticize them. She has also been nominated to lead the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM); the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding her confirmation hearing this morning.
If confirmed, Rogers—who is a lawyer by training and has no experience running a media organization—would continue her work overseeing America’s rapidly deteriorating public image around the world while bringing her far-right views to the agency that oversees Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and other public media properties that are meant to bring reputable information to closed societies.
USAGM has been decimated under Trump 2.0. In March 2025, election denier Kari Lake—who served as Acting CEO of the Agency while it was without a Senate-confirmed appointee—worked with DOGE to slash a workforce of over 2000 journalists around the world to the statutory minimum of 81. Broadcasts to places like Iran, Venezuela, and Russia—places you might think the Trump administration had an interest in undermining local propaganda—were halted.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled a year later that Lake had illegally served as Acting CEO and that her actions in that position were null and void. The judge ordered USAGM to return former employees to their positions and resume broadcasts.
In the months since, as the Trump administration has fought an unpopular war in Iran, it has attempted to turn USAGM back on—and turn it into a MAGA propaganda outlet. Patsy Widakuswara, former VOA White House Bureau Chief and lead plaintiff against the administration’s attempt to dismantle the agency describes the partisanship that has come to characterize VOA for Steve Herman’s Substack:
Current editorial priorities bear many of the characteristics of wartime propaganda, including at VOA Farsi, one of only six of VOA’s 49 language services brought back in a much-reduced capacity following legal action against the administration. Stories center on administration statements, often without opposing context. Recent articles highlight administration claims that oil prices are lower than before the war and that maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been restored. Meanwhile, VOA suppressed coverage of civilian death tolls from U.S. airstrikes and barely mentioned the February bombing of the elementary school in Minab.
The USAGM that Rogers stands to inherit bears no resemblance to the promise Voice of America made to its listeners during its first foreign broadcast on February 1, 1942: “Daily at this time, we shall speak to you about America...The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.”
Rogers will not do that. Whatever editorial independence USAGM still clings to will be obliterated. Critical coverage of Trump will be softened or canned, as will coverage of his allies such as Nigel Farage or other far-right figures across Europe. She will calcify the transformation of America’s foreign broadcasters into propaganda outlets and continue to squander the trust of audiences that have depended on them for reputable reporting for decades.
America’s advantage in the information war has never been peddling propaganda; it has been the dependable truth. We don’t serve America’s interests by pushing a puffed up, perfidious picture of our country. But our adversaries—whose propaganda is slicker, more compelling, and more practiced than MAGA’s blunt, cringeworthy attempts—will surely celebrate when we do.
I’d tell you to picture it, but you don’t have to. It’s already happening. 🧭
Further reading:
Just published today: The New Yorker on “How Trump Silenced the Voice of America.”
Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic on Kari Lake’s tenure at USAGM.
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Excellent piece! Thanks for everything you do, Nina.
Nina, thank you for profiling the manipulation of State’s PD by Sarah Rogers. She and her motley crew working on “censorship” and neo-Nazi apologists are scary.