On March 13, the staff of Radio Free Asia (RFA) were informed that furloughs against most of them would commence in the following week due to a suspension in funding by the U.S. Agency for Global Media following attacks against it by the Trump administration, which would culminate in an executive order to dismantle its subsidiaries in the following day.
This is on top of another financial blow to RFA, with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency imposing a 30-day freeze on it and its sister media groups such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
RFA is one of the few soft power tools that America has to combat disinformation from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in Asia, namely China, as well as to reach audiences in those countries. As many as 44 million Chinese people listen to RFA weekly, as of 2018.
