The extent of the impacts of the Trump administration’s sudden 90-day freeze of almost all foreign aid is still unclear almost a week on, as officials and aid workers overseas try to make sense of which activities must be suspended.

The suspension of foreign aid was outlined in a diplomatic cable from Secretary of State Marco Rubio last Friday.

Contractors working with USAID – many of them US-based companies and small businesses – often front the money for aid work, then submit invoices and get reimbursed later.

Now, some are not being paid for millions of dollars’ worth of services already rendered, the aid industry source said. That means there will be significant furloughs of staff at many aid contractors and subcontractors.

“We were told to lay off all of our staff,” said Annie Feighery, the CEO of mWater, a US company that provides a free digital platform to governments and organizations around the world to help improve access to water. She said that as a subcontractor, the firm is “carrying a debt load of our projects” and has not yet been paid for work done in January.

The USAID stop-work order has taken out 80% of her company’s budget, she said.

“It’s going to put a lot of small businesses out of work,” Feighery said, noting that mWater staff in Indonesia, Haiti, Kenya, Uganda and the US are impacted. “If we’re allowed in May to go back to work, we will have to do the work in May and get paid in June… It’s horrific, you know, to imagine any company going two quarters without their funding.”

She added that companies working in the technology aid space are also concerned about other nations, like China, stepping in to fill the void during the 90-day pause on foreign aid. Foreign governments using data systems that are US-based, like those of mWater, is better than having them run on Chinese technology, she argued.

Widespread confusion over waiver for ‘humanitarian aid’

The State Department said in a media note on Wednesday that the freeze does not include humanitarian aid, “which is defined as ‘life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.’”

The note also claimed that “critical national security waivers have been granted, including to ensure the protection of US personnel overseas, facilitate the repatriation of illegal aliens, enforce non-proliferation obligations, and much more.”

The State Department claimed it had “provided straightforward guidance” about waivers to the freeze last Friday.

The official said that even though the waiver gives an exemption for ‘life-saving humanitarian aid,’ it’s not clear if that includes funding for staffers who carry out the work. Their organization has been unable to withdraw US funds at all, and is exploring whether to put staff on furlough, because it doesn’t have cash reserves to pay people.

USAID funds foreign aid projects in more than 100 countries around the world. Other agencies like the State Department, Department of Health and Human Services, Defense Department, Treasury and the Peace Corps also control portions of the US foreign aid budget.

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, at about 1% of federal budget obligations.

“The administration is asking a lot of the right questions, but they’re asking them the wrong way, and in far too of an abrupt fashion that’s far more disruptive to the lives and livelihoods of human beings around the world than it could be,” said John Oldfield, the chief executive of Accelerate Global, which advises nonprofits and companies working in global development.

“The sick are getting poorer and the poor getting sicker,” Oldfield said of the developing world. “People are losing their jobs. People are losing their livelihoods. This is happening right now, even within the first 48 or 72 hours after these decisions by the White House.”

Concerns about development aid

A source working in the US foreign aid industry stressed that the humanitarian aid waiver does not include most development aid, which also saves lives, for example through improving water security, food security, sanitation and hygiene.

“Development aid is longer-term work and that is still on pause,” said the source, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.

In many cases, the stop-work orders stemming from the US State Department aid freeze have suspended projects that are done in support of US security and global security interests, according to aid workers.

The World Council of Credit Unions, headquartered in Wisconsin, said in a statement Wednesday that following the stop-work orders, it had suspended a USAID project in Peru and Ecuador that helps Venezuelan refugees with credit lending, savings, and with obtaining “documentation that allows them to integrate into their local economies, thereby stemming their migration to the US.”

The international credit organization also said it had suspended work on its USAID GROW Project in Ukraine, which “supports agricultural production and food security, an area Ukraine is central to in supporting the global food chain.”

Funding halt to HIV programs

“A funding halt for HIV programmes can put people living with HIV at immediate increased risk of illness and death and undermine efforts to prevent transmission in communities and countries. Such measures, if prolonged, could lead to rises in new infections and deaths, reversing decades of progress and potentially taking the world back to the 1980s and 1990s when millions died of HIV every year globally, including many in the United States of America,” the WHO said in a statement.

“We call on the United States government to enable additional exemptions to ensure the delivery of lifesaving HIV treatment and care.”

The chief executive of the Gates Foundation, Mark Suzman, said in a statement: “US assistance programs, such as PEPFAR, deliver life-saving medicine, medical care, and combat hunger and starvation. These programs protect the health of Americans, bolster US national security, and build stronger economies.”

The foundation is committed to working with the administration on these issues, he added, “and encourage them to ensure this critical funding continues immediately while their reviews are underway.”

Chaotic scenes surrounding the release of Israeli and Thai hostages in Gaza on Thursday brought condemnation from Israeli leaders and a temporary delay in the release of Palestinian prisoners, who were ultimately released later in the day.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu postponed by several hours the agreed release of 110 Palestinian detainees, including dozens of minors, after live images were broadcast across Israel of a crowd of thousands jostling and cheering as the hostages were handed over to the Red Cross in the central Gazan city of Khan Younis.

He described those scenes as “shocking,” and demanded guarantees from those who mediated a ceasefire deal – Qatar, Egypt and the United States – that the incident would not be repeated.

The release Thursday morning of the captive Israeli soldier Agam Berger in Jabalya, northern Gaza, had gone off without incident – a stage-managed affair in which Hamas militants paraded her in front of cameras and then handed her to representatives from the International Committee for the Red Cross.

But the release in the early afternoon of two Israeli and five Thai civilians produced some of the most stunning images of the nearly two-week-old ceasefire, striking a painful nerve for much of the Israeli public.

Unusually, that handover was a joint affair between Hamas and several allied militant groups. Thousands of Gazans crowded in Khan Younis as Hamas and its allies staged the handover outside the razed house of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, killed by Israeli forces in October.

Among those released was Arbel Yehoud, a 29-year-old civilian whom militants abducted from her home in the Nir Oz kibbutz on October 7, 2023. She was held captive by the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Stepping out from a white van, the Israeli civilian looked gaunt and frightened. As militants walked her through a roaring crowd, she kept her head locked forward as her eyes darted left and right. The crowd jostled her back and forth as she made her way toward a waiting Red Cross vehicle.

Yehoud was returned to Israel without further incident. But for many in Israel, the images sparked fears of a repeat of an infamous, televised incident in which two reservist Israeli soldiers were killed by a Palestinian mob in the occupied West Bank, after they stumbled onto the funeral of a child whom Israeli troops had killed the previous day, and following the killing of more than 100 Palestinians.

Fifteen hostages have been released since a ceasefire went into effect earlier this month. Their freedom has brought some relief to a nation traumatized daily by images of civilians and soldiers held captive since October 7, 2023.

But that solace has accompanied by astounding images of Hamas militants’ elaborate handover ceremonies – clearly designed to show that the group is still standing, despite the Israeli government’s promises of “total victory” over the perpetrators of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a right-wing extremist who has threatened to withdraw from the governing coalition, has cited Hamas’s presence on the streets of Gaza as proof that Israel must return to war, saying that it was proof “of the heavy and terrible price Israel is paying for this bad deal.”

110 Palestinians released

Just as night fell, the Israeli prison authority released 110 Palestinians from Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, including a prominent former militant leader from the embattled city of Jenin.

In the West Bank town of Beitunia, which overlooks Ofer Prison, the Israeli military on Thursday shut down public celebrations by Palestinians over the detainees’ release, as has repeatedly been the case.

Israeli troops fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear a small crowd, and dropped Arabic-language flyers warning onlookers that “the security forces will not allow demonstrations in support of terrorist organizations.”

The release was met with jubilation in the streets of Ramallah, where hundreds gathered to meet some of the released detainees. Many of those gathered there chanted in support of Hamas’ military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades. A smaller crowd of Fatah supporters has gathered on a nearby hill.

Among those freed were 30 children – some held without charge and none convicted, according to Adalah, a legal aid organization. Also released were 32 prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment and 48 prisoners with “high sentences.” Some of those with serious sentences were due to be released to Egypt, as per the terms of the ceasefire deal agreed to in Doha.

The most prominent to be released on Thursday was Zakaria Zubeidi, former commander of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the military wing of the Fatah party, which governs the West Bank. His mother, brother, and son have all been killed by the Israeli military. Zubeidi rose through the ranks of the militant group during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.

A former child actor, Zubeidi co-founded The Freedom Theatre in his hometown of the Jenin Refugee Camp following that conflict, to promote cultural education among his compatriots.

He was arrested in 2019 and charged with involvement in shooting attacks against Israelis. He gained near cult status among many Palestinians after he was among a group who tunneled out of Israel’s high security Gilboa prison in 2021, before being re-arrested several days later.

Mohammad Al Sawalhi, Tareq Al Hilou, Eugenia Yosef, Lauren Izso, Dana Karni and Khader Al-Za’anoun, a journalist with WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, contributed reporting.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum sent a letter to Google contesting the tech giant’s decision to comply with US President Donald Trump’s order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

President Sheinbaum showed the letter to reporters Thursday saying, “In the case of Mexico, where are we completely sovereign? In the area established as 12 nautical miles from the coastline, and this applies to all countries worldwide.”

“If a country wants to change the designation of something in the sea, it would only apply up to 12 nautical miles. It cannot apply to the rest, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico. This is what we explained in detail to Google.”

Referring to a previous counterproposal she made to Trump to rename the US, Sheinbaum added, “In the end, we requested that when someone searches for ‘América Mexicana’ in the search engine, the map we previously presented should appear.” That map, from 1607, labeled parts of North America “Mexican America” and was shown during a press conference earlier this month.

On Monday, Google announced that Google Maps users in the US would see the body of water known as the Gulf of Mexico renamed as the Gulf of America. Google said its move was in line with its “practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”

Users in Mexico will continue to see the “Gulf of Mexico” on Google Maps. The rest of the world will see both names.

Google will also change the name of Mount McKinley, the nation’s highest peak, from Denali. Former President Barack Obama renamed the Alaska landmark to Denali in 2015 as a nod to the region’s native population.

Both changes stem from an executive action that Trump signed shortly after taking office last week, saying the changes “honor American greatness.”

“It is in the national interest to promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of our American heroes,” the executive order said.