Kari Lake, senior adviser to the parent agency of Voice of America, is set to be detailed to the State Department, a move that could thwart her ambition of transforming U.S.-backed news content worldwide, according to two people with knowledge of the move who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share internal decisions.
President Donald Trump tapped Lake to lead VOA, which delivers news to audiences around the world, after she had eagerly sought a position in the new administration. Lake, a one-time Republican candidate for Arizona governor and U.S. Senate, had told her associates that she wanted to transform the outlet into a powerful “weapon” to fight an “information war.”
But Trump’s campaign to dismantle the federal bureaucracy effectively gutted VOA and its parent, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), through an executive order. Lake never became director of VOA. She was instead named a senior adviser to USAGM with an uncertain long-term role.
The individuals did not say exactly what post she will fill at the State Department, or whether Trump’s initial plan of eventually installing her over VOA fizzled after billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. Doge Service called for the news agency to be shut down. This is the first high-profile shuffle for a political appointee of the new administration.
Lake’s move is intended to help her coordinate closely with USAGM and the State Department to scale back the agency and its affiliated outlets to their statutory minimum, a third person familiar with her movements said: “She will be detailed over to State to accomplish this mission.”
Those plans face their own uncertainty. Trump’s executive order initiating the process faltered in the wake of a string of judicial decisions blocking the effort, leaving the news operations and their employees in a holding pattern.
Lake’s new role is expected to take effect as early as this week, the two people said.
“I remain committed to effectuating President Trump’s mission to modernize and reform the way we tell America’s story around the world while protecting the interest of the American taxpayer,” Lake said in a statement to The Washington Post on Tuesday. “In order to do that effectively, we look forward to working with interagency counterparts including the Department of State under the strong leadership of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”
Lake initially pushed back against Musk’s efforts to dismantle VOA in February in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
“I believe it is worth trying to save,” she told the audience, just before she was named special adviser to USAGM. Trump intended to install her as VOA director later this year before abandoning those plans, according to the two people familiar with Lake’s future moves.
Voice of America was founded to deliver news coverage to countries around the world where a free press is threatened or nonexistent. At its start, VOA told stories about democracy to people in Nazi Germany. VOA and affiliates such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia were designed as a form of soft diplomacy, a way to tout the United States’ free-press values in countries where antidemocratic forces prevail.
Trump has accused VOA of speaking “for America’s adversaries — not its citizens.” And Lake, an ardent Trump surrogate who has echoed his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, also repeated his criticism of national media outlets — and of the content at VOA.
Trump’s directive targeted both VOA and its parent agency, and severedcontracts for privately incorporated international broadcasters that the agency also oversees, including Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. All told, about 3,500 journalists and other media workers were affected by the moves.
The swift action threatened to force VOA to go dark for the first time since it launched during World War II. It also revealed the uncertainty facing the people Trump has installed to lead federal agencies — and the tension between their ambitions to be relevant and his own desire to cut those agencies out of existence.
Various federal judges have temporarily halted the administration’s efforts to shut down the different news outlets, ruling that the administration cannot shut down a news organization that Congress established by law.
Lake, a former local TV news anchor, became one of Trump’s favorite surrogates over the past few years, largely because she adhered to his “Stop the Steal” message and delivered it with her signature soft-focus style.
At times, Trump expressed skepticism about her political viability in Arizona and wondered whether she could “drag” down his vote margins in a state he saw as key to his electoral success.
At one point in 2023, after grumbling that she visited his Mar-a-Lago Club too frequently, Trump suggested she should leave his Florida retreat and campaign for Senate in her home state.
Trump won the state last November. But Lake lost her U.S. Senate race in Arizona to Democrat Ruben Gallego — and quickly positioned herself for a role in Trump’s administration. Her name was mentioned as a possible contender for ambassador to Mexico or as an agency spokesperson. She fixed her attention on a position with VOA, according to a person familiar with Lake’s thinking.
At the time, according to an Arizona associate, there was “some uncertainty” about her long-term prospects in Washington because the Trump administration aimed to “gut” VOA.
“Then we’ll figure out something else for you to do,” the person recalled of the discussions.
“The idea was: Just come out here and we’ll figure it out. There’s a zillion comms jobs, face-of-the-franchise jobs,” the person said.
Amid a legal battle over the administration’s moves to essentially shut down VOA and other U.S.-funded outlets, Lake has mused about her future prospects with the administration.
During one recent conversation, she told the Arizona associate that she was enjoying the job, and she marveled at her efforts to ferret out waste.
“She said she was enjoying it,” the person recalled. “She had a mindset of trying to fix things and make it doable — but not a lot was worth saving.”
Lake presented the latest move as a continuation of her role as a storyteller for the country.
“I am thrilled to be working on behalf of President Trump and this administration. He put me in this role because I’m a fighter,” her statement read. “And I’m disgusted how Washington DC and this agency, in particular, has been screwing over hardworking Americans.”
