Rubio freezes US foreign aid, Trump threatens aid to California

While the Secretary of State ordered a halt on funds to all countries except Israel and Egypt, Donald Trump used his first trip as returned president to turn emergency aid into a political cudgel.

US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to travel to North Carolina. Picture: AFP

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered a halt to virtually all US foreign aid, but made an exception for funding to Israel and Egypt, an internal memo showed.

“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved... as consistent with President (Donald) Trump’s agenda,” said the memo to staff seen by AFP.

Meanwhile, Trump visited disaster zones in North Carolina and California on Friday, using his first trip since his return to office to turn emergency aid into a political cudgel.

Trump said he would sign an order that could scrap the federal disaster agency, stepping up his effort to exert presidential power over the levers of government and to decide which states get money from Washington.

The Republican billionaire also threatened to withhold funding for Democratic-led California – a long-term target of his ire – to deal with devastating wildfires if it does not follow his orders.

The visit came as the White House said that Trump’s promised operation to expel millions of undocumented migrants had begun with the launch of deportation flights on military aircraft.

Speaking in North Carolina, where floods caused by Hurricane Helene last year that killed more than 100 people in the state, Trump said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had “really let us down.”

Trump said he would be “signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”

“We’re going to recommend that FEMA go away.”