President Trump's decision to shut down the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio y Televisión Martí in Cuba and other U.S. government-funded media entities overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was sudden, harmful and deeply unfair. It places journalists in foreign language services who have devoted years of their lives to their jobs and have done nothing wrong in an impossible position.

To be sure, these agencies have suffered from terrible management decisions in recent years. But to break things by stopping all programming does not make these agencies better. Rather, it weakens their usefulness to U.S. national security.

Members of Congress from both parties must pressure the White House to allow these broadcasters to resume their work as soon as possible, even while supporting the administration's efforts to restructure, downsize and reform the agency's bloated and dysfunctional bureaucracy.

Although I was shocked by what happened Saturday when these agencies were shut down, I was not entirely surprised. Since I left my journalistic career at the Voice of America and retired from government service in 2006, I have continuously warned various agency CEOs, directors and the oversight board members from both parties that their tolerance of partisan journalism, practiced mainly by the VOA central English newsroom with the tacit approval and often encouragement of the executives above them, would sooner or later result in the defunding of the organization.

I was right to worry and to warn, but I did not anticipate the Trump administration's sudden,........

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