U.S. President Donald Trump has blocked the operations of the main government-funded outlets seeking to spread information to citizens living under repressive regimes, dealing a major blow to efforts to deliver news of the outside world to information-starved North Koreans.

On Friday, Trump issued an executive order that drastically curtailed the operations of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Washington’s externally focused media outlets such as Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA).

These outlets have long been integral to U.S. efforts to counter adversaries’ narratives, including by broadcasting radio programs into North Korea,