US-funded international broadcaster Radio Free Asia filed suit on Thursday to head off a bid to defund it, two days after its sibling Radio Free Europe won an interim reprieve.
President Donald Trump's administration has cut off Congress-approved funding to media previously backed by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), with the White House terming the outlets "radical propaganda."
On Tuesday, a US judge granted a temporary restraining order against USAGM, after Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty challenged the decision to withhold its $77-million 2025 budget.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) has also sought an injunction, lodging a lawsuit against USAGM and senior Trump administration officials at the US District Court in the US capital Washington.
"This is an encouraging sign that RFE/RL's operations will be able to continue, as Congress intended," the organization's CEO Stephen Capus said Thursday.
"We await official confirmation from USAGM that grant funding will promptly resume based on the intention expressed in last night's letter."
RFA chief executive Bay Fang said the outlet was "committed" to its mission.
"RFA remains committed to fulfilling its Congressional mandate of providing a voice that counters the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party and other authoritarian regimes in Asia," she said.
"They may be celebrating RFA's defunding right now, but we are confident that we shall prevail in blocking the unlawful termination of our grant."
On Friday, journalists from another government-backed broadcaster, Voice of America, are due in court seeking their own restraining order against the cuts.
Led by Trump's billionaire ally Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the US executive has dramatically slashed budgets across the federal bureaucracy.
Moscow and Beijing have welcomed the decision to silence the US-backed outlets, for decades seen as pillars of American soft power influence.