Six of the seven seats on the International Broadcasting Advisory Board are empty. Under a federal appeals court ruling issued Tuesday, that board is the only body that can approve firing the director of Voice of America.
On November 10, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed a permanent injunction that bars the U.S. Agency for Global Media from removing Voice of America director Michael Abramowitz without a majority vote of the advisory board. The unanimous panel held that the 2021 law requiring board approval does not violate Article II.
The case is Abramowitz v. Lake, No. 25-5314. Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote the opinion for a panel that included Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Florence Pan. No judge wrote separately. The court affirmed the district court's order of August 28, 2025.
What the government conceded
The appeal was narrower than the politics around it. "On the merits, defendants concede that they removed Abramowitz in violation of section 6205(e)," Pillard wrote. The government offered one defense, that the removal rules themselves "violate Article II."
Those rules are in 22 U.S.C. 6205. Congress rebuilt the advisory board in the defense authorization act passed in early 2021 after Michael Pack, then the agency's chief executive, fired the heads of several networks in 2020. The opinion says that episode drew a bipartisan letter of protest from seven senators, including Marco Rubio and Chris Van Hollen. The new law made the board a separate agency of seven Senate-confirmed members with partisan balance. It provides that network heads "may only be appointed or removed if such action has been approved by a majority vote" of the board, and that "five or more" members can remove a network head on their own after consulting the agency's chief executive.
How did Abramowitz end up in court?
Abramowitz was appointed in April 2024 with the board's unanimous approval, according to the opinion. After taking office in January 2025, President Trump fired six of the seven board members. An executive order on March 14, 2025, told the agency to cut its "non-statutory components and functions" to the extent the law allowed. Abramowitz and about 1,300 other Voice of America employees were then put on indefinite administrative leave.
In July 2025, with the board lacking a quorum, the agency told Abramowitz he would be reassigned "to a role as Chief Management Officer in Greenville, North Carolina," and removed if he refused. He refused. A letter dated August 1, 2025, said the agency "had made the decision to remove him."
Our timeline, with day counts
March 14, 2025: Executive Order 14238 is signed. Day 0.
August 1, 2025: Removal letter to Abramowitz, day 140.
August 28, 2025: District court enters the permanent injunction, day 167, and 27 days after the letter.
April 23, 2026: Argument in the D.C. Circuit, day 405.
November 10, 2026: Decision, day 606. That is 201 days after argument and 466 days after the removal letter.
The three holdings, read closely
First, jurisdiction. The government argued that the Civil Service Reform Act sends federal personnel disputes to the Merit Systems Protection Board, not district court. The panel disagreed. It said the CSRA cannot keep a network head in his job while a case goes on, since the board "lacks power to award preliminary relief," and that its remedies of backpay or reinstatement "cannot repair harms to a network's reputation, reach, and reliability." Section 6205(e), Pillard wrote, "is not a standard employment law, but a durable barrier against any breach of the firewall protecting the journalistic integrity of Voice of America."
Second, Article II. Both sides agreed Abramowitz is an inferior officer. The panel held that Congress may give removal power over an inferior officer to the head of another executive department, relying on Morrison v. Olson and Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB. It cited this year's Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which held that the President may remove principal officers at will. Because the parties did not dispute that the President can fire board members at will, the panel said he keeps control over the director through them. "So long as the President has adequate control over the department head, and the department head can control the inferior officer (as is the case here), the President can transitively control the inferior officer," the opinion says.
Third, remedy. The government said courts cannot order officials to keep someone in office. The panel pointed to its own precedent and to the Supreme Court's 2026 decision in Trump v. Cook, which it read as allowing a court to keep a removed official in place while litigation continues.
Our arithmetic: what a lawful removal would take
The opinion acknowledges a practical cost. "As a practical matter, it is true that the President might face delay if he had to fire and replace a majority of the Board to effectuate his removal decision," Pillard wrote, adding that the delay comes from the Appointments Clause itself.
Here is what that delay looks like in numbers, on our reading of the statute and the opinion's count of one sitting member. A majority of a seven-member board is four. If the one remaining member voted for removal, three more members would have to be nominated and confirmed by the Senate before the first route could work. The second route needs five votes, so it would take four new confirmed members. The statute also requires partisan balance, so not all of those seats could go to members of one party.
That calculation matters more after the November 3 elections. The Senate seated in January will be controlled by Democrats, as we noted in our count of vacant federal judgeships before the new Senate arrives, which would shape who could be confirmed to the board after January 3, 2027.
Where this fits
The ruling is one of several this fall about which court may hear a challenge to executive action. The Supreme Court took up a jurisdiction-stripping statute in the border wall case we covered in our close read of the Big Bend order. A related question about agency adjudication reached the justices on Tuesday in the Sun Valley Orchards argument.
What to watch
The government can ask the full D.C. Circuit to rehear the case or petition the Supreme Court. Under the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, a rehearing petition in a case where a federal agency is a party is due 45 days after judgment, which by our count is December 25, 2026, so the practical deadline would move to the next business day. A petition for certiorari would be due 90 days after judgment or after any rehearing denial.
Two Taps News stories summarize reporting and the analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. They are not legal advice. Read our standards.
