Pursuant to an executive order President Trump signed Monday night, it freezes all new awards of funding by the agencies ‘until further notice.’
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered a stop to the vast majority of existing foreign aid programs pending the outcome of a comprehensive review of funding for consistency with President Trump’s agenda, in a diplomatic cable issued today.
The order provided exceptions for specific programs, including foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and emergency food assistance.
It also bars the processing of new solicitations of funding and requests for proposals of assistance programs until the conclusion of a department-wide review. “Decisions whether to continue, modify, or terminate programs will be made following this review, it states.
The new order dramatically exceeded the scope of a draft of the cable obtained earlier in the week by National Review and of an executive order President Trump issued Monday night freezing new foreign development assistance programs for 90 days. The earlier draft of the cable only froze new non-security foreign assistance programs and allowed senior bureau officials to waive the freeze. The new version only grants the foreign assistance bureau the ability to authorize exceptions to the order.
The cable orders every office and bureau is required to provide State’s foreign assistance bureau with a “list of all active, pending, or proposed grants, subcontracts, contracts, or subcontracts, and provide a clear and concise statement explaining if and how the current or proposed use of obligated funds advances President Trump’s policy” within 30 days.
It does not describe further criteria according to which officials will conduct the review, though it tasks the department’s internal think tank, the office of policy planning with developing standards for it. State’s director of policy planning is also tasked with ensuring that “all foreign assistance is aligned with President Trump’s foreign policy agenda,” and with coordinating the creation of one database for all State Department funding awards.
“It is currently impossible to access sufficient information in one place to determine whether the foreign assistance policies and interests supported by appropriations are not duplicated, are effective, and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy,” the Rubio cable states.
The cable also stipulates that the government-wide review of foreign assistance must be completed within 85 days.
Foreign development assistance grants issued by the Biden administration had come under fire for promoting left-wing social programs. Republican lawmakers zeroed in on programs that promoted atheism abroad, funded drag queen festivals, and reflected the Biden-era department’s emphasis on DEI principles, among others. During the Trump administration, officials tried to centralize information about development grants in one location. But those efforts were resisted, and U.S. government officials often declined to tell Congress the names of grant awardees, invoking national security waivers.
Rubio has embarked on a broad reorientation of America’s diplomatic arm around the goal of promoting U.S. interests. Earlier this week, he issued a separate cable detailing his vision for a “sweeping” overhaul of the department, which includes the elimination of DEI-related efforts.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story reported on a draft cable Rubio sent to State Department employees, but the cable has subsequently been finalized. We have now updated this story to reflect the final wording in the cable.