Former U.S. senator from Florida Marco Rubio jumps into new role as secretary of state with flurry of phone calls, planned trip to Panama.

The State Department has suspended the processing of passport applications that selected “X” as their gender following an executive order from President Donald Trump.

State Department staff were instructed to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker” and to “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker.”

In February, millions of Americans will benefit from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a crucial initiative providing financial support to low-income individuals. Managed by the USDA,

The U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday it was probing the release by an upstate New York sheriff's office of an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, in what appears to be its first use of a new policy to target state and local agencies that do not comply with President Donald Trump's directives.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is advising his department to cease refugee resettlement operations and begin ramping up vetting of visas from certain regions.

The State Department has frozen new funding for almost all U.S. aid programs worldwide, making exceptions to allow humanitarian food programs and military aid to Israel and Egypt to continue.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a memo reviewed by NBC News, said additional guidance would be issued on existing passports containing an “X” sex marker.

Marco Rubio will head overseas late next week; he's also scheduled to visit Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's trip to Central America, including Panama, is partially about countering China, a State Department spokesperson told Fox Business, as new President Donald Trump is pushing to "take back" the Panama Canal.

A legally contested executive order on foreign aid did, at least initially, halt the distribution of life-saving HIV drugs.

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.