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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s order to cut off funding to Voice of America (VOA) and several other affiliated pro-democracy media outlets has drawn widespread criticism from press freedom organizations and journalists, who warn it risks severely damaging independent journalism covering some of the world’s most repressive countries.

Trump announced an executive order late Friday to effectively dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which supervises VOA. Following the order, the head of VOA said all of its 1,300 journalists and staff had been put on administrative leave.

Trump’s executive order also terminated grants for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, which broadcast news to Eastern Europe, Russia, China and North Korea and Central Asia.

The order threatens to close down media organizations that for decades have provided independent news coverage and promoted journalism to hundreds of millions of people worldwide and provided an information lifeline to people living in countries under authoritarian regimes, advocates say.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a prominent press freedom organization, called the move a “reward to dictators and despots” and urged Congress to act to preserve the media outlets.

VOA and the other media organizations were founded during World War II to promote democracy and provide uncensored information. But even after the end of the Cold War, in many authoritarian and poor countries, they have continued to play a powerful role as independent news providers, sometimes as the only open media where all others are censored or severely under-resourced, such as Iran, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan and North Korea.

VOA and its affiliates reach 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week, according to the U.S. Agency for Global Media. VOA and RFE/RL’s reporting has been routinely deemed a threat by authoritarian regimes, which have sought to pressure them, including by jailing their journalists.

Ten journalists and contributors of the VOA, RFE, and RFA are currently either imprisoned or missing in different countries across the world, according to the USAGM website.

In Russia and much of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, RFE/RL reporters have played an outsized role in covering political repression and sometimes breaking major corruption investigations. They employ hundreds of local journalists, reporting in both English and the local language.

VOA’s Persian department broadcasts television news programs in Iran and operates a news website. RFE/RL’s Persian Service, Radio Farda, also produces news and analysis in audio and video formats and runs a news website.

“Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian journalists have faced intense suppression, censorship, imprisonment, and even execution at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran leaving Iranian people with almost no access to free media platforms inside the country,” a UK-based Iranian journalist told ABC News.

“Shutting down outlets like VOA Persian, Radio Liberty, and Radio Farda would deal a major blow to press freedom and the free flow of information in Iran, directly serving the interests of the Islamic Republic,” the journalist, who asked not to be named for security reasons, added.

In a statement published on his LinkedIn Sunday, Michael Abramowitz, Voice of America’s director, said, “For the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced.”

“VOA promotes freedom and democracy around the world by telling America’s story and by providing objective and balanced news and information, especially for those living under tyranny,” he added.

But Trump and his allies have attacked VOA as corrupt and promoting values alien to the United States. Trump, in his first term, accused the organizations of speaking for “America’s adversaries – not its citizens”.

The White House in a statement Saturday said the order “will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

The Trump administration has also framed the gutting of VOA as part of the drastic effort to cut down the federal budget being led by Elon Musk. Musk last month wrote the USGM outlets are “just radical crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1bn/year of US taxpayer money.”

Kari Lake, failed Senate candidate for Arizona, who Trump had tapped to oversee VOA and had promised to overhaul it, on Saturday wrote the agency was “a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer,” calling it “unsalvageable.”

European leaders on Monday expressed dismay at the cutting of funds to RFE/RL, with some suggesting they were exploring ways to partially fill the gap.

The Czech Republic’s foreign minister, Jan Lipavsky, said RFE/RL, which is based in Prague, “is one of the few credible sources in dictatorships like Iran, Belarus, and Afghanistan.”

He said he would raise the issue with his fellow European Union foreign ministers on Tuesday about how to help the outlet to keep at least partially broadcasting.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski confirmed that the EU is considering options to help RFE/RL, according to the Kyiv Independent.

“We are at the stage of brainstorming, but clearly, these are worthy institutions whose mission should continue,” Sikorski told the website.

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(MADISON, WI) — The Democratic National Committee is set to announce on Tuesday its earliest-ever new election cycle investment into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which will see Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate, take on Republican-backed Brad Schimel, a former state attorney general and current Waukesha County judge, ABC News has learned exclusively.

To help boost organizing on the ground, the Democratic Party will host phone banks and call more than 2 million Wisconsin voters in support of Crawford.

The DNC’s new investment will be used for on the ground operations, including organizing, peer-to-peer texting, and mobilizing thousands of volunteers to help the Wisconsin Democratic-coordinated campaign. Last month, DNC Chair Ken Martin was in Wisconsin canvassing for the Wisconsin Democratic coordinated campaign.

The April 1 election will decide who will take the open seat on the court and whether the bench will remain under control by the liberal justices or flip to a conservative majority, with major cases involving abortion, redistricting, and election laws being brought up.

The investment being made by the DNC comes on the first day of early voting in Wisconsin and marks the first investment by the organization since the 2024 election.

The race will also preview how voters in the battleground state feel a few months into President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump won the state by just under 30,000 voters in the 2024 election.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is also seen as one indication of Elon Musk’s influence beyond Washington and how Democrats try to push back against the richest man in the world, linking him to Schimel, the Republican-backed candidate.

“With Wisconsin voters up against the world’s richest man, this is an all-hands-on-deck moment and we’re thrilled to have the support of the DNC in this fight,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “Elections in Wisconsin often come down to a hairsbreadth, and every voter we can turn out to support Judge Susan Crawford and Dr. Jill Underly on April 1 can make the difference between keeping Wisconsin on a path of progress or letting Elon Musk and Donald Trump drag us backwards.”

A conservative group linked to Musk, Building America’s Future, has spent more than $1.6 million on television ads in the race, while another, Musk’s super PAC America PAC, has spent over $6 million on get-out-the-vote efforts and digital media, according to state campaign finance records.

“When I went to Wisconsin to knock doors last month, folks told me they don’t want billionaires like Elon Musk running our federal government and they certainly don’t want him buying our elections,” Martin said in a statement.

But billionaires have also invested in support of Crawford, including George Soros and Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.

Although Trump has not endorsed Schimel, Musk urged on X last month for people to “vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!”

The DNC is also working to support the Wisconsin Democratic coordinated campaign, with the state party recently announcing their “People vs. Musk” campaign to push back against Musk’s influence in the race.

The state’s Supreme Court race is the most expensive judicial race in US history, according to The Brennan Center, a nonprofit public policy institute.

As of Monday, more than $59 million has been spent in the race, which the think tank says breaks the record for the most spending in a state supreme court election, surpassing the estimated $56 million poured into the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is taking aim at one of his predecessor’s final acts in office: preemptive pardons for members of the House Jan. 6 select committee.

In a late-night social media post, Trump claimed without evidence President Joe Biden used an autopen to sign the pardons and so he considered them “hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.”

Trump, who made retribution against his perceived political enemies a focal point of his 2024 campaign, said the committee members should “fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level” despite no findings of wrongdoing.

Despite his claims, legal experts told ABC News that Trump does not have the power to overturn Biden’s actions.

A president’s clemency power is vested in Article II of the Constitution and is “broad and virtually unlimited,” said Jeffrey Crouch, an assistant professor at American University and expert on presidential pardons.

Its few restrictions include that it can only apply to federal offenses and can’t interfere with the impeachment powers of Congress.

In 1929, a memo by the solicitor general to the attorney general on pardons held that “neither the Constitution nor any statute prescribes the method by which Executive clemency shall be exercised or evidenced.”

“It is wholly a matter for the President to decide, as a practical question of administrative policy,” the department said. “Nobody but the President can exercise the power, but the power having been exercised the method of making a record and evidence thereof is a mere detail which he can prescribe in accordance with what he deems to be the practical necessities and proprieties of the situation.”

The memo was cited in a federal appeals court ruling just last year that said pardons don’t necessarily have to be in writing.

And while autopens (mechanical devices used to automatically add a signature to a document) have come under scrutiny in the past, the Justice Department as recently as 2005 determined they were constitutional and could be used for a president to sign a bill into law in a study commissioned by then-President George W. Bush.

Former President Barack Obama used an autopen to extend the Patriot Act, avert a fiscal crisis and more during his administration. Other presidents, including Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, are also documented as having used the device or one similar.

“If the autopen is illegal, then many of the actions and regulations that presidents have done for the past four or five decades are null and void. It’s a ridiculous argument,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

“There is nothing in the Constitution that requires that a pardon must be signed without an autopen. Obviously, that is a 20th century invention, and earlier presidents had no access to such technology. Nonetheless, Trump has zero authority to undo a Biden pardon, just as the next president has no authority to undo Trump’s pardons,” said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law expert at the University of North Carolina.

ABC News has inquired with Biden’s team and the current White House to learn more about their autopen usage but has not received comment.

Aboard Air Force One late Sunday, Trump was asked if any executive order or action from Biden that included an autopen would be considered null.

“It’s not my decision, that’ll be up to a court,” Trump responded, “but I would say that they’re null and void because I’m sure Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place, and somebody was using an autopen to sign off and to give pardons.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also suggested, without evidence, that Biden was unaware of his signature being affixed to the pardons.

“Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?” Leavitt said during Monday’s briefing.

Asked specifically if attorneys at the White House told Trump he has the legal authority to undo a pardon because it was signed by autopen, Leavitt said Trump was just “begging the question that I think a lot of journalists in this room should be asking.”

Biden issued the eleventh-hour pardons just hours before Trump’s inauguration. He spoke several times in his final media interviews about how he was considering such an option for people he feared could be targeted in the next administration, such as Liz Cheney or Anthony Fauci.

What would happen if Trump tried to ignore or challenge Biden’s action?

“It could open a Pandora’s box if a sitting president tried to undo a pardon by one of their predecessors. The better rule would be that pardons — whether perceived as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ decisions — should be final,” said Crouch.

ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Nicholas Kerr contributed to this report.

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