Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that he is now the acting director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

During his five-nation trip to Central America, Rubio announced the development to reporters while taking questions from the press at a maintenance firm, Aeroman, in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador. 

Rubio said his frustration with USAID goes back to his time in Congress, describing the agency as ‘completely unresponsive.’ It is supposed to respond to policy directives at the State Department ‘and it refuses to do so,’ the secretary said, adding: ‘there are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue, that are going to be a part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy.’ 

During his confirmation hearing, Rubio recalled, he said that ‘every dollar that we spend and every program that we fund will be aligned with the national interests of the United States, and USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that and deciding that they’re somehow a global charity separate from the national interest.’ 

‘These are taxpayer dollars. And so I’m very troubled by these reports that they have been unwilling to cooperate with people who are asking simple questions about what does this program do, who gets the money, who are our contractors, who’s funded,’ Rubio said. ‘And that sort of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct the sort of mature and serious review that I think foreign aid at large should have.’ 

‘We’re spending taxpayer money here. These are not donor dollars,’ Rubio continued. ‘These are taxpayer dollars, and we owe the American people the assurances that every dollar that we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interests. And so far, a lot of the people who work at USAID have simply refused to cooperate.’ 

Asked if he was currently in charge of USAID, Rubio said, ‘I’m the acting director of USAID. I’ve delegated that authority to someone, but I stay in touch with him.’ 

‘And again, our goal was to allow our foreign aid to the national interest,’ Rubio said. ‘But if you go to mission after mission, and embassy after embassy around the world, you will often find that in many cases USAID is involved in programs that run counter to what we’re trying to do and our national strategy with that country or that region. That cannot continue. USAID is not an independent, non-governmental entity. It is an entity that spends taxpayer dollars, and it needs to spend it, as the statute says, in alignment with the policy directives that they get from the Secretary of State, the National Security Council and the president.’ 

‘It’s been 20 or 30 years where people have tried to reform it. And it refuses to reform, it refuses to cooperate with people. When we were in Congress we couldn’t even get answers to basic questions about programs,’ he said. ‘That will not continue.’ 

USAID staffers were instructed earlier Monday to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters after Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency. 

Thousands of USAID employees already had been laid off and programs shut down in the two weeks since Trump took office. USAID staffers also said more than 600 additional employees had reported being locked out of the aid agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that ‘at the direction of Agency leadership’ the headquarters building ‘will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.’ The agency’s website can no longer be reached. 

Democratic lawmakers have protested the moves, saying Trump lacks constitutional authority to shut down USAID without congressional approval and decrying Musk’s accessing sensitive government-held information through his Trump-sanctioned inspections of federal government agencies and programs.

‘This is a corrupt abuse of power that is going on,’ Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said at a rally with agency supporters and other Democratic lawmakers in front of the USAID building. ‘As my colleague said, it’s not only a gift to our adversaries, but trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal.’

In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump addressed concerns about the access granted to Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency.

‘Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval. And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t,’ Trump said.

Rubio traveled to El Salvador on Monday after spending two days in Panama. 

Before his departure, he observed from the tarmac a repatriation flight carrying 32 men and 11 women back to Colombia after they had crossed the Darien Gap and were stopped in Panama.

The State Department said such deportations send a strong message of deterrence and that the U.S. has provided Panama with financial assistance to the tune of almost $2.7 million in flights and tickets.

‘Mass migration is one of the great tragedies in the modern era,’ Rubio said, speaking afterward in a nearby building. ‘It impacts countries throughout the world. We recognize that many of the people who seek mass migration are often victims and victimized along the way, and it’s not good for anyone.’

His trip comes amid a sweeping freeze in U.S. foreign assistance and stop-work orders that have shut down U.S.-funded programs, including in Central American countries. The State Department said Sunday that Rubio had approved waivers for certain critical programs in countries he is visiting, but details of those were not immediately available.

Trump has been threatening action against nations that will not accept flights of their nationals from the United States, and he briefly hit Colombia with penalties last week for initially refusing to accept two flights. Panama has been more cooperative and has allowed flights of third-country deportees to land and send migrants back before they reach the United States.

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino agreed Sunday to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road development and infrastructure initiative after Rubio warned him to reduce China’s role in canal operations or face American retaliation.

‘What I expressed to President Molina, who, look, he is a friend of America,’ Rubio said later Monday from El Salvador. ‘Panama is a strong partner, an ally of the United States. As the president has articulated, when we turned over the canal, we turned it over to Panama. We didn’t turn it over to China. So you get there and the Chinese control both entries to the port.’ 

‘We have a treaty obligation to protect the canal if it comes under attack. But our navy is paying fees to go through there,’ he continued. ‘So I expressed frustration about those things. And again, I understand that it’s a delicate issue in Panama. We don’t want to have a hostile or a negative relationship with Panama. I don’t believe we do. But we had a frank and respectful conversation, and I hope it’ll yield fruits and result in the days to come.’

Rubio added that Panama has ‘been a great partner’ in slowing down the rate of migration coming across Darien Gap.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Senate Republican campaign committee is touting that it is off to a strong fundraising start as it aims to defend and expand its majority in the chamber in the 2026 midterm elections.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) announced on Monday that it raked in a record $8.5 million in January, which the committee says is its best ever off-year January haul.

‘To deliver on the promises President Trump made to the American people, we must protect and grow our Republican Senate Majority,’ South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the new NRSC chair, said in a statement.

Scott teased that ‘the NRSC’s record-breaking January is just the beginning. We will work tirelessly to ensure Republicans have the resources and operations needed to win in battleground states across the Senate map.’

However, in a memo sent to Senate Republican chiefs of staff, NRSC Executive Director Jennifer DeCasper noted that the committee will ‘enter this cycle with nearly $24 million in debt and unpaid bills from last cycle and limited cash on hand.’

The NRSC ended 2024 with $2.7 million in its coffers.

The rival Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has yet to announce its January fundraising.

Republicans won control of the Senate in November’s elections by flipping an open seat in West Virginia, and ousting Democratic incumbents in Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The GOP currently holds a 53-47 majority in the Senate.

Senate Republicans enjoyed a very favorable map in the 2024 cycle as they won back control of the majority. An early read of the 2026 map shows they will continue to play offense in some states, but will be forced to play defense in others.

The GOP will target an open Democrat-held seat in battleground Michigan, where Sen. Gary Peters announced last week that he would not seek re-election in 2026. They will also target first-term Sen. Jon Ossoff in battleground Georgia and longtime Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in swing state New Hampshire.

However, Democrats plan to go on offense in blue-leaning Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is up for re-election, as well as in battleground North Carolina, where Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is also up in 2026.

A newly formed outside group aligned with President Donald Trump says it’s taking aim at Republican senators who remain undecided on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as it pushes to confirm Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary.

Patient First Coalition (PFC), a nonprofit advocacy group launched last week, says it’s now beginning what it describes as a ‘massive grassroots effort’ to encourage Republican senators to support Kennedy, the vaccine skeptic and environmental crusader who ran for the White House in 2024 before ending his bid and endorsing Trump.

Kennedy survived back-to-back combustible Senate confirmation hearings last week, where Trump’s nominee to lead 18 powerful federal agencies that oversee the nation’s food and health faced plenty of verbal fireworks over past controversial comments, including his repeated claims in recent years linking vaccines to autism, which have been debunked by scientific research.

The move by PFC, which says it’s a collective group of organizations committed to advancing Kennedy’s so-called ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda, comes ahead of Tuesday’s key confirmation vote by the Senate Finance Committee.

‘All uncommitted Republican Senators will be targeted in this grassroots effort,’ PFC highlighted.

Shannon Burns, the group’s senior advisor, shared that ‘our grassroots phase will include television, radio and podcast interviews with our advisory board members, as well as guest columns in newspapers across the country.’

‘We will enable thousands of calls and emails into Senate offices from millions of Americans who support this agenda. We want to organize them, mobilize them, and make sure their voices are heard before the Senate votes,’ Burns added.

PFC pointed out that it will initially give ‘special focus’ to GOP senators in Louisiana, Maine, Alaska, Kentucky and North Carolina.

Those states are home to Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana physician and chair of the Senate Health Committee, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who are often at odds with Trump, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former longtime Senate Republican leader, and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

‘Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me,’ Cassidy told Kennedy at the end of Thursday’s confirmation hearing.

PFC is one of a handful of outside groups targeting GOP senators in the fight to confirm Trump’s nominees.

A source in Trump’s political orbit tells Fox News that those groups could ‘exact consequences’ on Republican senators who don’t support the president’s Cabinet nominees.

And Trump on Sunday took to social media to demand that Senate Republicans ‘GET TOUGH VERY FAST’ in confirming the rest of his Cabinet.

House conservatives are cheering the apparent scale-down of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), led by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

‘USAID is a corrupt governmental organization run by unelected bureaucrats created to shovel taxpayer dollars to Democrats’ pet projects overseas,’ Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Fox News Digital.

‘At nearly $37 trillion in national debt – and a $1.8 trillion annual deficit – we can’t afford to continue giving money to countries that hate America and everything we stand for,’ he said.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital that shutting down USAID ‘will help reduce our national debt and relieve the burden on taxpayers, while compelling aid-dependent countries to achieve true self-reliance, snapping them out of the dependency cycle USAID has perpetuated under the false banner of ‘development.’’

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., endorsed the idea of ending its independent agency status on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ over the weekend.

‘I would be absolutely for, if that’s the path we go down, removing USAID as a separate department and having it fall under one of the other parts of the Department of State, because of its failure,’ Mast said.

USAID is an independent agency in the federal government that provides civilian foreign aid to help encourage development, fight poverty and disease, and promote democracy overseas.

However, conservatives argue that the agency has strayed from its intended purpose and have called for steep cuts to its multibillion-dollar budget.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X, ‘7 months ago, I tried to DEFUND USAID. Only 81 Republicans voted ‘aye’ which is ‘yes’ to my amendment to prohibit funding to USAID. 127 Republicans and 204 Democrats voted NO to my amendment and voted to FUND USAID. I FULLY SUPPORT ELIMINATING USAID!!!’

Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., similarly said on the platform, ‘I once proposed an amendment on the House floor to cut the USAID budget by 50%. A sensible start. You won’t be shocked to know that it didn’t have enough support from my fellow Republicans.’

Fifty senior USAID staff have been placed on administrative leave, sources told Fox News over the weekend. Staff have also been barred from communicating with anyone outside the agency without approval. 

Its computer systems have also been taken over by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the sources said.

Democrats have criticized the USAID crackdown, particularly with regard to Musk – who they point out is an unelected ally and donor to Trump. 

‘Agency watchdogs track down waste, fraud and abuse. Trump fired them all. The Government Accountability Office monitors federal spending. What Elon Musk is doing isn’t oversight. An unaccountable billionaire doesn’t have the power to cancel spending he disagrees with,’ Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, wrote on X.

Rep. Diane DeGette, D-Colo., said, ‘USAID is critical in advancing U.S. national security interests, providing humanitarian aid, and strengthening global stability. Musk is an unelected billionaire with no authority to make these decisions. This isn’t governance, it’s authoritarianism.’

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report

Excluding Ukraine from U.S.-led talks involving the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kyiv’s eastern front would set a ‘dangerous’ precedent to dictators across the globe, warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

‘If there will be direct talks between America and Russia without Ukraine, it is very dangerous, I think,’ Zelenskyy said in a Saturday interview with the Associated Press. ‘They may have their own relations, but talking about Ukraine without us – it is dangerous for everyone.’

Zelenskyy argued that doing so would validate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion and ‘show that he was right’ because he received ‘impunity’ and ‘compromise.’ 

‘This will mean that anyone can act like this. And this will be a signal to other leaders of the big countries who think about [doing]… something similar,’ he said. 

The Ukrainian president’s comments came before President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested that his administration had already begun talks with Moscow and claimed they were ‘going pretty well.’

‘We have meetings and talks scheduled with various parties, including Ukraine and Russia. And I think those discussions are actually going pretty well,’ he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. 

On Friday, Trump refused to say whether he had spoken directly with Putin and wouldn’t detail who in his administration had begun talks with Moscow, though he insisted the two sides were ‘already talking’ and had engaged in ‘very serious’ discussions.

Speaking with Fox News on Friday, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg said, ‘Everybody is pulling together’ on ending the three-year-long war in Ukraine. 

‘It’s important because we realize it is actually in our national security interest to get this war resolved,’ Kellogg said. ‘When you look at the money the United States has provided, which is over $174 billion, when you look at the alliance that has now formed with Russia, with North Korea, with China and Iran – that wasn’t there before.’

Despite the U.S. pledge to send Ukraine more than $175 billion worth of military aid, Zelenskyy said over the weekend that Ukraine hasn’t received anywhere near this much support, telling the Associated Press that in terms of military aid, Kyiv has only received some $75 billion worth. 

It remains unclear where the remainder $100 billion in military support has gone, and the White House did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s questions on the matter.  

Kellogg also told Fox News that Trump ‘will lead’ the negotiations and said, ‘I think most people should be very comfortable in the fact that he knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows where to apply pressure, where not to apply pressure.  But more importantly, that he will create leverage, leverage both with Ukrainians and the Russians.’

The special envoy didn’t specify how Trump will apply this pressure to both Moscow and Kyiv, though Putin and Zelenskyy have made clear that negotiating on Ukraine joining the NATO alliance is a non-starter. 

Zelenskyy argued Trump could get Putin to the negotiating table by threatening to increase sanctions on Russia’s energy and banking systems, along with continued military aid to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president also argued that Trump should back Ukraine’s push to join the NATO security alliance as it would be the ‘cheapest’ option for Ukraine’s allies.

Ukraine’s admittance into the NATO alliance would likely protect Kyiv against the threat of another Russian invasion, as it would grant the country security guarantees under Article Five, which says an attack on one nation ‘shall be considered an attack against them all.’ 

However, Putin has long threatened nuclear escalation should Ukraine be granted admittance to the international security alliance. 

President Donald Trump’s administration is facing scrutiny this week after working with billionaire Elon Musk to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an organization Musk called a ‘viper’s nest’ of mismanaged funding.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) worked with the Trump administration to shut down USAID on Monday. While the agency’s long-term future remains unclear, lawmakers and activists have repeatedly accused USAID of using funding to leverage policy changes across the globe. Under President Joe Biden’s administration, the organization was frequently used to push abortion in Africa, critics say.

Biden cleared path for international abortion push

Biden cleared the path for U.S. funding to flow toward pro-abortion groups across the globe just days after entering office. He signed an executive order rescinding the Reagan-era ‘Mexico City Rule’ on Jan. 28, 2021.

The rule, first rescinded by President Barack Obama and then reinstated during Trump’s first term, prevented foreign aid from going to nongovernmental organizations that promote abortion or provide abortion services.

‘These excessive conditions on foreign and development assistance undermine the United States’ efforts to advance gender equality globally by restricting our ability to support women’s health,’ Biden said at the time.

Biden’s rule change cleared USAID to send millions in funding to aggressive abortion organizations like Marie Stopes International (MSI). MSI said it relied on USAID for 17% of its total donor income under the Obama administration, adding that the lack of U.S. support created an $80-million ‘funding gap’ over the final three years of Trump’s term.

The group said the countries most heavily impacted by the lack of funding were Madagascar, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Biden accused of ‘hijacking’ AIDS program to push abortion in Africa

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., accused Biden in 2023 of ‘hijacking’ a successful AIDS relief program to push an international abortion agenda.

Smith’s accusations centered on PREPFAR, a funding program within USAID that, at the time, had already allocated some $100 billion toward fighting AIDS across the world, saving 25 million lives and preventing millions of infections.

Smith says two groups, Population Services International (PSI) and Village Reach, had received $96.5 million and $10.1 million, respectively, from PEPFAR under Biden, and both groups have a track record of pushing abortion.

‘PSI proudly proclaims it provides abortion and lobbies to eliminate pro-life laws,’ Smith said at the time. ‘PSI provides comprehensive abortion and post-abortion care services in nearly 20 countries throughout the world.’

Smith alleged Village Reach used PEPFAR funds ‘to promote abortion in Malawi and lobby for changes in pro-life laws’ and also ‘helped Malawi establish a government-funded hotline (that included providing information and referrals for ‘sexual and reproductive health,’ i.e., abortion).’

A third group, Pathfinder International, received $5 million in PEPFAR funding from 2021 to 2023. Smith said the group ‘lobbies to weaken or eliminate pro-life laws in nations around the world’ and is ‘explicit in its promotion of abortion in other countries, stating it is ‘committed to expanding access to … safe abortion.’

Biden admin accused of pushing lax abortion laws in Sierra Leone

Biden’s administration was accused in December of pressuring the government of Sierra Leone to adopt more permissive abortion policies in exchange for foreign assistance.

A report from the Daily Signal stated that The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. government-run funding allocator, was threatening to withhold hundreds of millions in foreign assistance funding if the nation didn’t relax its policies, a former senior U.S. government official told the outlet.

The MCC CEO Alice Albright signed an agreement with Sierra Leone’s finance minister, Sheku Bangura, in late September. The agreement called for the country to receive $480 million in foreign assistance so long as it met the MCC’s ‘rigorous standards for good governance, fighting corruption and respecting democratic rights.’

The organization denied any effort to influence Sierra Leone’s abortion policies in a statement to Fox News Digital in December.

‘The Millennium Challenge Corporation is unaware of any Sierra Leonean abortion legislation and has never made any requests to the Government of Sierra Leone regarding abortion policies. Any such legislation would be an internal matter for Sierra Leone with no U.S. government developments fund made contingent on its passage,’ the organization said in a statement.

Footage circulating on social media showed raucous pro-life protesters demonstrating inside Sierra Leone’s parliament at the time as lawmakers debated legislation detailing more permissive abortion rules.

Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.

North Korea is criticizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s description of the country as a ‘rogue state,’ calling it ‘nonsense’ while vowing to take ‘tough counteraction’ to any provocations from the Trump administration. 

Rubio made the remark last week during an appearance on ‘The Megyn Kelly Show,’ where he was speaking about the goals of U.S. foreign policy. 

‘It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power. That was not – that was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with,’ Rubio said, according to the State Department. 

North Korea’s foreign ministry said in response that Rubio ‘talked nonsense by terming the DPRK a ‘rogue state’ while enumerating the foreign policy of the new U.S. administration.’ 

‘The Foreign Ministry of the DPRK deems the U.S. State Secretary’s hostile remarks to thoughtlessly tarnish the image of a sovereign state as a grave political provocation totally contrary to the principle of international law which regards respect for sovereignty and non-interference in other’s internal affairs as its core and strongly denounces and rejects it,’ read a statement published by North Korean state media. 

‘Rubio’s coarse and nonsensical remarks only show directly the incorrect view of the new U.S. administration on the DPRK and will never help promote the U.S. interests as he wishes,’ the statement added, taking a swipe at the Trump administration. 

‘We will never tolerate any provocation of the U.S., which has been always hostile to the DPRK and will be hostile to it in the future, too, but will take tough counteraction corresponding to it as usual,’ it concluded. 

Rubio said during the interview that ‘now more than ever, we need to remember that foreign policy should always be about furthering the national interest of the United States and doing so, to the extent possible, avoiding war and armed conflict, which we have seen two times in the last century be very costly.   

‘They’re celebrating the 80th anniversary this year of the end of the Second World War. That – I think if you look at the scale and scope of destruction and loss of life that occurred, it would be far worse if we had a global conflict now. It may end life on the planet,’ he also said. ‘And it sounds like hyperbole, but that’s – you have multiple countries now who have the capability to end life on Earth. And so we need to really work hard to avoid armed conflict as much as possible, but never at the expense of our national interest. So that’s the tricky balance.’ 

The Senate will hold a vote Monday evening on whether to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Energy, Chris Wright.

Wright, the CEO and founder of Liberty Energy Inc., an energy industry service provider based in Colorado, was tapped by the 47th president to head the Department of Energy under his administration.

The Trump nominee has received bipartisan support for his nomination, being introduced by a Democrat, Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this month. 

Wright will face the final hurdle of his confirmation process on Monday evening during a full Senate vote on his confirmation.

If confirmed, Wright will be sworn in this week as the next secretary of energy.

Wright, during his confirmation hearing, said he had identified three ‘immediate tasks’ where he would focus his attention: unleashing American energy, leading the world in innovation and technology breakthroughs and increasing production in America.