The Miami-based Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which oversees Radio and TV Martí, and the Martí Noticias website, was spared from the latest round of layoffs at Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
“Contrary to false reporting, none of the OCB’s 33 employees have been terminated,” Kari Lake, President Donald Trump’s senior advisor, posted on X on Friday.
The USAGM is the parent agency of the VOA and OCB.
Kari Lake announces mass layoffs at US Agency for Global Media https://t.co/bztx0tdr0D via @JustTheNews
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) June 20, 2025
Layoff notices were sent Friday to 639 employees of VOA and USAGM, effectively shutting down the global outlet that has provided news to countries around the world since World War II.
READ MORE: Voice of America gutted by Trump adviser Kari Lake
In total, some 1,400 people at VOA and USAGM, or 85% of its workforce, have lost their jobs since March.
Lake said the layoffs are part of a “long overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”
“For decades, American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that's been riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste,” Lake said in a statement. “That ends now.”
In the statement, however, Lake specifically dismissed unnamed media reports that the OCB and its outlets online and on air, mainly Radio and TV Martí, would fire its staff.
She said the OCB’s staff will remain, noting the agency would continue to transmit news into Cuba from its studio in Marathon in the Florida Keys.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
