Kari Lake’s legally challenged and destructive stint as the de facto head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media is coming to an end, but the replacement President Donald Trump has tapped to take her place is hardly an improvement.
Following a judge’s ruling that Lake was illegally leading USAGM, which includes federally funded media organizations like Voice of America, the Trump administration on Thursday nominated State Department Undersecretary Sarah Rogers to take her place.
Rogers said she intends, if confirmed, to serve in her new role while keeping her current role as undersecretary.
Over the past year as undersecretary, she’s become known as a champion of far-right parties and an opponent of efforts to curb the spread of hate speech, disinformation and other harmful content online. Rogers, who was promoted to the administration by members of right-wing activist group Turning Point USA, has been integral to the Trump administration’s efforts to fund and promote far-right political groups in foreign countries.
In December, for example, Rogers met with a member of the extremist German AfD party, which she praised for its purported “anti-censorship” stance. And in January, she objected to a British probe into social media platform X’s spread of AI-generated, nonconsensual pornography, including images that appear to depict children. Around that time, Rogers gave an interview to a right-wing UK news outlet in which she framed the investigation as some sort of infringement of free speech.
These statements seem instructive of what Rogers’ nomination could ultimately mean for the USAGM and its ability to promote information that is accurate and not tinged with far-right ideology.
Lake brazenly used her position atop and power over USAGM to promote MAGA talking points and push Trump’s political agenda. Having Rogers take over (while concurrently working, somehow, at the State Department) poses the same issue and risks as turning USAGM into a megaphone for far-right propagandists and extremists, both stateside and abroad.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.