Voice of America made the U.S. a superpower. Now Trump has surrendered
Before I became an American citizen, I knew America.
I remember sitting beneath Mogadishu’s blue sky, under the skeleton of an acacia tree, watching pigeons soar low and high as boys chased a ball, their laughter carried by the wind while dust rose and danced above their heads. Somalia’s civil war had not yet begun, and the world still made sense. Voice of America was my favorite radio station, the voice of a beloved, diverse nation.
In the late 1980s, before war marched into our lives and destroyed everything, my older sister was obsessed with Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller.” Voice of America played it repeatedly, and though I secretly enjoyed the song, I wouldn’t dare let her catch me nodding along because I was a boy: She loved music, singing and dancing, while I admired military men in green uniforms. But Voice of America broke through all that, and we learned another story was possible.
Years later, when I became a student at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, that voice of publicly supported media followed me: National Public Radio became my favorite radio station. Helping me refine my accent and deepen my understanding of the language, it helped me learn not only the language, but also the rhythm of American thought, its debates, its heartache, its humor.
Public media has long been America’s greatest superpower, and its influence long the envy of other nations. But the Trump administration has now surrendered to America’s enemies, killing off public media and letting Russia and China take over.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-05-14/voice-of-america-pbs-npr-trump