Kari Lake makes it official: Trump administration almost totally dismantles Voice of America. Who is she?
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Who is Kari Lake?
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The Trump administration has terminated 639 employees at Voice of America 9VOA) and its parent organization in the latest round of sweeping cuts. Hundreds of employees at the VOA were notified Friday they are being laid off as President Trump's administration works to trim down and retool the English-language broadcaster under his close ally Kari Lake Kari Lake announced termination notices would be sent to employees at the broadcaster, part of what she called a 'long overdue' effort to trim down the 'bloated unaccountable bureaucracy' overseeing the outlet. The move comes just days after USAGM Senior Adviser Kari Lake called back dozens of employees for the network's Persian-language service amid Israel's conflict with Iran, reports The Independent.'For decades, American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that's been riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste. That ends now,' said Kari Lake, Trump's senior advisor to USAGM, in Friday's termination announcement.The layoffs at the agency began in March when President-elect Trump signed an executive order targeting federal agencies he labelled as "bloated bureaucracy". VIA staff were placed on paid leave and broadcasts were suspended.In December last year, Trump picked Kari Lake to run the state-funded global media organisation Voice of America (VOA), the publicly funded broadcast network that drew his ire in his first term. A former local news anchor and staunch Trump ally, Lake mounted unsuccessful Senate and gubernatorial campaigns in Arizona, according to a TOI report.Lake is a top adviser at the US Agency for Global Media , which oversees the VOA, Radio Free Europe and a number of other foreign broadcast outlets launched by the federal government after World War II. She had previously floated plans to replace the service's professional journalism with content from One America News Network (OANN), a rightwing pro-Trump network that would provide programming without charge.Born in 1969, Kari Lake Halperin is an American political figure and former television news anchor. She started her career in the early 1990s and was the anchor for the Phoenix television station KSAZ-TV from 1999 to 2021. She stepped down from her anchor role shortly before announcing her gubernatorial candidacy, winning the Republican nomination with the endorsement of Donald Trump.Lake was raised in Iowa and graduated from North Scott Senior High School in Eldridge before earning a Bachelor of Arts in communications and journalism from the University of Iowa.In August 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Lake organized anti-mask rallies and urged Arizona State University students to defy campus mask mandates. She stated that, if elected governor, she would oppose both mask and vaccine mandates.In November 2021, during a talk with Republican retirees, Lake revealed she was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure against COVID-19. She also expressed skepticism about the science behind COVID-19 vaccines and said she had not been vaccinated. Lake was previously married to electrical engineer Tracy Finnegan. She has been married to Jeff Halperin since August 1998.
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