THE US State Department has frozen nearly all foreign assistance worldwide, effective immediately, days after President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order Monday to put a hold on such aid for 90 days.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a cable, seen by CNN, to all US diplomatic posts on Friday outlining the move, which threatens billions of dollars of funding from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for programs worldwide.
Foreign assistance has been the target of ire from Republicans in Congress and Trump administration officials, but the funding accounts for very little of the overall US budget. The scope of the executive order and subsequent cable has left humanitarian and State Department officials reeling.
The cable calls for immediate “stop work” orders on existing foreign assistance and pauses new aid. It is sweeping in its scope. Essentially all foreign assistance appears to have been targeted unless specifically exempted. That means lifesaving global health aid, development assistance, military aid, and even clean water distribution could all be affected.
The cable provides a waiver only for emergency food assistance and foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt. The cable does not specifically mention any other countries that receive foreign military financing, like Ukraine or Taiwan, as being exempt from the freeze.
In the coming month, the cable said, the administration will develop standards for a review of whether the assistance is “aligned with President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.”
“Decisions whether to continue, modify, or terminate programs will be made following this review,” the cable states, noting that such a review should be completed within 85 days.
In a public statement on Wednesday, Rubio said that “every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
The impact of the freeze on assistance will be immense because the US is consistently the world’s largest humanitarian donor.
InterAction, an alliance of international nongovernmental organizations, said in a statement Saturday that the freeze “interrupts critical life-saving work including clean water to infants, basic education for kids, ending the trafficking of girls, and providing medications to children and others suffering from disease. It stops assistance in countries critical to U.S. interests, including Taiwan, Syria, and Pakistan.”
“The recent stop-work cable from the State Department suspends programs that support America’s global leadership and creates dangerous vacuums that China and our adversaries will quickly fill,” the statement said.
One humanitarian official said the pause is incredibly disruptive and said the specifics of the cable are “as bad as can be.”
Another official told CNN that while they expected there to be cuts or changes to assistance to specific areas, they were not expecting such a sweeping and immediate pause. They said that the humanitarian needs worldwide are acute and a freeze in assistance from the US could be detrimental.