About two months ago a US district court judge ruled that Kari Lake, the MAGA firebrand and election truther, had been illegally appointed to run the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America. Lake insisted in a statement at the time that she would be staying on at the agency, but the ruling raised questions about what power, if any, she now holds at a department President Donald Trump has sought to gut since he stormed back into the White House last year.
Now, a source close to Lake says she’s planning to leave USAGM and has another role lined up. Over White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend, Lake was heard boasting about a new position in the Trump administration. One rumor that’s been floating around is that she’s being appointed to a job at the Shield of the Americas, an alliance of Latin American and Caribbean nations that Trump formed as part of his focus on reestablishing the dominance of the Western Hemisphere in geopolitics.
When reached for comment, Lake declined to say whether she was taking on a new role. “I’m still at the Agency for Global Media,” she told Vanity Fair. “I am still currently employed there.” When asked if she would be joining the Shield of the Americas, she offered a terse reply: “I won’t be answering any questions about my future to Vanity Fair.”
The alliance has all the hallmarks of a Trumpian scheme. Its name sounds like it was conjured up by a child who plays too much Call of Duty. Its most prominent members are hard-line Trump allies Javier Milei of Argentina and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Its inaugural “summit” was an event held at Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida. The left-wing leaders of Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, though their nations represent more than half of the region’s GDP, were not present.
The purported mandate of the alliance is to combat “foreign interference in our hemisphere, criminal and narco-terrorist gangs and cartels, and illegal and mass immigration,” but regional experts I spoke with questioned whether the Shield serves as anything other than a promotional vehicle for its members.
The new gig won’t bring Lake to Washington—she’s already here. Around town, Lake has cut an abrasive figure. She’s a regular at The Ned, the members club perched on the top floors of an Art Deco building that’s a stone’s throw from the White House and serves as a canteen for Cabinet members. Lake has often been seen working the room with Caroline Wren, a Republican fundraiser who organized the 2021 rally that preceded the riot at the US Capitol.
One Ned regular recalled an incident in which Lake got into a heated argument with Senator Ruben Gallego, the Democrat who defeated her in 2024, after he extended his hand for a cordial greeting when they ran into each other at the club last year. “How does it feel to be bought and paid for by the cartels?” Lake asked Gallego, referencing a baseless conspiracy theory she peddled about her opponent during the campaign. (Lake did not respond to a request for comment about the interaction.)
