The U.S. State Department issued a "stop-work" order on Friday for all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, Reuters reported citing a cable, after President Donald Trump ordered a pause to review if aid allocation was aligned with his foreign policy.

The cable, drafted by the Department's foreign assistance office and approved by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said waivers have been issued for military financing for Israel and Egypt. No other countries were mentioned in the cable.

The move risks cutting off billions of dollars of life-saving assistance. The United States is the largest single donor of aid globally - in fiscal year 2023, it disbursed $72 billion in assistance.

Just hours after taking office on Monday, Trump ordered a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy but the scope of the order was not immediately known.

The State Department cable said effective immediately, senior officials "shall ensure that, to the maximum extent permitted by law, no new obligations shall be made for foreign assistance" until Rubio has made a decision after a review.

It says that for existing foreign assistance awards stop-work orders shall be issued immediately until reviewed by Rubio.

"This is lunacy," Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official who is now president of Refugees International, said. "This will kill people. I mean, if implemented as written in that cable ... a lot of people will die."

"There's no way to consider this as a good-faith attempt to sincerely review the effectiveness of foreign assistance programming. This is just simply a wrecking ball to break as much stuff as possible," Konyndyk said.

Trump's order is unlawful, argued a source familiar discussions in Congress on the move.

"Freezing these international investments will lead our international partners to seek other funding partners - likely U.S. competitors and adversaries - to fill this hole and displace the United States' influence the longer this unlawful impoundment continues," the source said on condition of anonymity.

WAIVERS

A USAID official, who requested anonymity, said officers responsible for projects in Ukraine have been told to stop all work. Among the projects that have been frozen are support to schools and health assistance like emergency maternal care and childhood vaccinations, the official said.

Across the board, "decisions whether to continue, modify, or terminate programs will be made" by Rubio following a review over the next 85 days. Until then Rubio can approve waivers.

Rubio has issued a waiver for emergency food assistance, according to the cable. This comes amid a surge of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas began on Sunday and several other hunger crises around the world, including Sudan.

But Konyndyk said emergency food assistance was just a minority of all humanitarian assistance, adding that nutrition, health and vaccination programs will have to stop, as would relief aid to Gaza and Syria as well as services to refugee camps in Sudan.

"It's manufactured chaos," said a former senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Organizations will have to stop all activities, so all lifesaving health services, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, maternal and child health, all agriculture work, all support of civil society organizations, education," said the official.

The State Department cable also said waivers have so far been approved by Rubio for "foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and administrative expenses, including salaries, necessary to administer foreign military financing."

Israel receives about $3.3 billion in foreign military financing annually, while Egypt receives about $1.3 billion

Other states identified for such financing in 2025 include Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Djibouti, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Israel, Egypt and Jordan, according to a request to Congress from former President Joe Biden's administration.

That request also said foreign military financing would "also seek to bolster the Lebanese Armed Forces' ability to mitigate instability and counter malign Iranian influence."

The Lebanese military is currently trying to deploy into the south of the country as Israeli troops withdraw under a ceasefire deal that requires Iran-backed Hezbollah weapons and fighters to also be removed from the area.

President Donald Trump's administration has directed U.S. prosecutors to criminally probe local officials who resist immigration enforcement efforts, intensifying a sweeping crackdown that Trump launched the day he took office.

Trump's acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, told Justice Department staff that state and local authorities must cooperate with the immigration crackdown and federal prosecutors "shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution," Reuters reported citing a memo.

The Justice Department could also challenge laws that complicate the effort, Bove wrote.

The policy was issued as the new Republican administration prepared to step up policing of illegal immigration in cities with significant migrant populations, setting up potential confrontations with local officials in so-called sanctuary cities such as New York and Chicago that limit cooperation with such efforts.

The new memo underscored how Trump's Justice Department may try to back his immigration agenda by expanding threats of criminal charges beyond immigrants or those who employ them to city and state officials. It is the latest in a series of executive actions Trump has taken to curb illegal immigration, his top priority.

During Trump's first 2017-2021 term in office, many Democratic officials refused to cooperate with his enforcement efforts, and some vowed to defy him again.

"We know that we don't have to participate in immigration enforcement activities," Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta said on CNN.

But resistance in the party is not monolithic this time. In the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday 46 Democrats -- one-fifth of their number -- joined 217 Republicans to pass legislation that would require immigrants who are in the country illegally to be held for deportation if they are accused of theft. The bill was named for Laken Riley, a Georgia woman who was killed by an illegal immigrant who had a prior record of shoplifting.

It has already passed the Senate with Democratic support and now heads to Trump's desk to be signed into law.

"The American people want us to do something about the border and I think we’d be hard-pressed to not say that we have to deport criminals," Representative Tom Suozzi, a moderate Democrat who voted for the bill, told Reuters.

TROOPS TO BORDER

Trump has issued a broad ban on asylum and taken steps to restrict citizenship for children born on American soil. A U.S. official said on Wednesday the military would dispatch 1,000 additional active-duty troops to the Mexico-U.S. border on Trump's orders.

The administration has rescinded guidance from his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden that had limited immigration arrests near schools, churches and other sensitive places. Trump has also expanded immigration officers' power to deport migrants who cannot prove they have been in the U.S. for longer than two years.

Trump has separately taken aim at federal diversity programs, ordering agencies to put officials overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion programs on leave by Wednesday and to shut down DEI offices by the end of the month.

The swift actions signal Trump's intention to fulfill many of his culture-war campaign promises by pushing the limits of executive power even further than he did during his first term.

Americans are sharply divided on Trump's plans for mass deportations. A new Reuters/Ipsos survey showed 39% agreed that "illegal immigrants should be arrested and put in detention camps while awaiting deportation hearings," while 42% disagreed and the rest were unsure.

Some 46% of respondents said they approved of how Trump was handling immigration policy, while 39% disapproved. Most respondents who backed mass arrests identified as Republicans, while most who did not were Democrats.

The poll, which surveyed adults nationwide on Jan. 20-21, found 58% of respondents agreed that the U.S. should "dramatically reduce the number of migrants allowed to claim asylum at the border," while 22% disagreed.

TARGETING SANCTUARY CITIES

State and local officials who resist or obstruct immigration enforcement could be charged under federal laws against defrauding the U.S. or harboring immigrants who are in the U.S. unlawfully, according to the Justice Department memo.

Prosecutors who opt not to file criminal charges will need to explain their reasoning to superiors, the memo said.

The department this week also reassigned close to 20 career officials, transferring some to a new unit aimed at stopping sanctuary cities from resisting Trump's immigration plans, two sources said.

Of the estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally or with temporary status in 2022, about 44% lived in states with "sanctuary" laws that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. That figure does not include those in sanctuary cities and counties in places without a statewide law, such as New Mexico.

In Mexico, authorities have begun constructing giant tent shelters in the city of Ciudad Juarez to prepare for a possible influx of deported Mexicans.

Donald Trump declared there are “only two genders” as he was sworn in Monday as the 47th president of the United States, returning for a second term in office.

“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders -- male and female,” he said, marking the first mention of gender in an inaugural address.

"The golden age of America begins right now," Trump said minutes after he was sworn in during a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, the first since 1985, when Ronald Reagan moved the ceremony indoors due to exceptionally frigid temperatures.

In his inaugural address, Trump also used words such as “Manifest Destiny,” "National Emergency," "Colorblind," "Sanctuary," "Horrible," "Suburban," “Betrayal” and “Weaponization” for the first time in history.

Following the inauguration, the president is slated to depart the Capitol and head to the nearby Capital One Arena, where he will address supporters during a rally that will also feature a presidential parade.