The United States has officially withdrawn from the World Health Organization (WHO), Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy announced in a joint statement last Thursday. The announcement comes after a year-long waiting period, finishing a move begun during the first Trump administration that “responds to the WHO’s failures during the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to rectify the harm from those failures inflicted on the American people.”

“This is a good, good day. I’m glad the Trump administration did this,” celebrated Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on “Washington Watch.” “This is one of the things that people elected President Trump to do, is withdraw from one world order, global governance.”

Reasons for WHO Withdrawal

“Like many international organizations, the WHO abandoned its core mission and acted repeatedly against the interests of the United States,” Rubio and Kennedy argued. “Although the United States was a founding member and the WHO’s largest financial contributor, the organization pursued a politicized, bureaucratic agenda driven by nations hostile to American interests.”

In an accompanying press release, HHS detailed the WHO’s failures more specifically. “The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread,” HHS recalled. “During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China’s response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission. The organization also downplayed asymptomatic transmission risks and failed to promptly acknowledge airborne spread.”

Even worse, “After the pandemic, the WHO did not adopt meaningful reforms to address political influence, governance weaknesses or poor coordination, reinforcing concerns that politics took priority over rapid, independent public health action and eroding global trust,” HHS continued. “Its report evaluating the possible origins of COVID-19 rejected the possibility that scientists created the virus, even though China refused to provide genetic sequences from individuals infected early in the pandemic and information on the Wuhan laboratories’ activities and biosafety conditions.”

“Even on our way out of the organization, the WHO tarnished and trashed everything that America has done for it,” exclaimed Rubio and Kennedy. “The WHO refuses to hand over the American flag that hung in front of it, arguing it has not approved our withdrawal and, in fact, claims that we owe it compensation. From our days as its primary founder, primary financial backer, and primary champion until now, our final day, the insults to America continue.”

On July 6, 2020, the first Trump administration had given official notice of its intention to withdraw from WHO. However, President Biden retracted that notice on January 20, 2021. On January 22, 2025, President Trump revoked President Biden’s letter and again gave notice to the WHO of America’s intention to withdraw from the organization. The White House publicized that notice in a January 29 executive order, “Withdrawing the United States From the World Health Organization.”

The withdrawal was “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states,” President Donald Trump stated. “In addition, the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments. China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.”

The executive order directed administration officials to discontinue any cooperation with WHO programs, or reframe them on bilateral terms, and “pause the future transfer of any United States Government funds, support, or resources to the WHO … consistent with applicable law.” Accordingly, in a “yearlong process, the U.S. stopped funding WHO, withdrew all personnel from WHO, and began pivoting activities previously conducted with WHO to direct bilateral engagements with other countries and organizations,” HHS reported.

Dispute over WHO Withdrawal

However, WHO officials did not immediately acknowledge the Trump administration’s withdrawal. WHO legal officer Steven Solomon said America’s withdrawal was an “open question” for the remaining member states to discuss.

The WHO constitution does not provide a mechanism for member states to withdraw. “In 1946, the drafters [of the treaty that established the WHO] understood the historic struggles against the international spread of disease, and they saw how a truly universal organization would make the world safer, so they did not include a withdrawals clause,” Solomon said. “Instead, they provided flexibilities within the treaty so it could accommodate all countries,” comparing it to the United Nations (U.N.) Charter, which also has no withdrawal clause, “based on the principle of the importance of universality for that instrument.”

However, the WHO’s constitutional silence is not the final word. On June 14, 1948, the U.S. Congress adopted a joint resolution (22 U.S.C. §290c) stipulating that, “in the absence of any provision in the World Health Organization Constitution for withdrawal from the Organization, the United States reserves its right to withdraw from the Organization on a one-year notice: Provided, however, That the financial obligations of the United States to the Organization shall be met in full for the Organization’s current fiscal year.”

Then-President Harry Truman subsequently accepted the WHO constitution with the condition that he was “acting pursuant to the authority granted by the joint resolution … and subject to the provisions of that joint resolution.” The WHO accepted the U.S.’s accession “subject to the provisions of the joint resolution of the Congress” and on July 2, 1948 unanimously “recognized the validity of the ratification by the United States of America.” Thus, the U.S. became the only country to reserve the right of withdrawal from WHO.

However, the right of withdrawal reserved by Congress was subject to two conditions. First, the U.S. must give a one-year notice of its intent to withdraw. Second, the U.S. must meet its financial obligations in full. The first condition has clearly been met, but the second condition is causing a stir.

The WHO argues that the U.S. has not paid its assessed contribution for the biennial 2024-2025 budget and still owes the organization $278 million. But the Trump administration counters that unfair assessments are a major reason for its withdrawal from the organization. In its 2022-2023 budget assessments, for example, the WHO obligated the U.S. for a net contribution of $206.6 million, while it obligated China — a similarly sized economy with triple the population — to pay $114.9 million. For years, the U.S. has also made voluntary contributions to WHO programs, going far beyond its obligations.

“The United States will not be making any payments to the WHO before our withdrawal,” insisted a State Department spokesperson. “The cost born[e] by the U.S. taxpayer and U.S. economy after the WHO’s failure during the COVID pandemic — and since — has been too high as it is.”

When asked about the legal status of America’s withdrawal, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric replied, “Look, I think for all intents and purposes, they are no longer participating in the work of the World Health Organization. Those legal details will likely have to be worked out.”

The WHO has a major incentive to work out those legal details in a way that requires the U.S. to pay $278 million. As a result of America’s withdrawal, the WHO had to dramatically reduce its budget, cutting its posts by 22%, including half of its senior and middle management positions.

Unsurprisingly, WHO officials were highly critical of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw. “It is not really the right decision. I want to say it bluntly, because I believe there are many things that are done through WHO that benefit the U.S. The U.S. cannot be safe without working with WHO,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “It’s not about money. I’m not saying money doesn’t matter, but what matters most is solidarity, cooperation, and for the whole world to prepare itself for any eventualities [of] a common enemy, like a virus like COVID-19. We need cooperation and solidarity for that.”

The Infectious Diseases Society of America likewise criticized the decision, calling it “a shortsighted and misguided abandonment of our global health commitments” and arguing that “Global cooperation is not a luxury; it is a biological necessity.”

However, Senator Johnson emphasized the importance not of solidarity, but of sovereignty. The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the WHO “preserves American sovereignty,” Johnson said. “It’s not exactly like we got it right during COVID, but I would far prefer Americans making health decisions for Americans as opposed to One World Government.”

“We still need a COVID reckoning,” Johnson maintained. “We need to understand exactly what happened inside our health agencies, within hospitals, why we sabotaged early treatment with the generic drugs. … But the last thing we needed was to have the World Health Organization dictate to us how we handle the next pandemic scare.”

FRC President Tony Perkins echoed these sentiments, noting that, “as bad as COVID-19 was … the power grab that we saw … was going to be kind of standard practice, had the WHO succeeded in moving forward their pandemic agreement.”

During the Biden administration, U.S. representatives at the WHO had been lobbying for a pandemic agreement that would have had far-reaching, legally-binding consequences for Americans — without any input from the U.S. Congress. “Had we gone down this path, it would have put a course correction out of our reach,” Perkins predicted. “So at least now we have an opportunity to fix the way … our government deals with these things in the future.” Johnson concurred, remarking, “People did not really realiz[e] the amount of freedom we would have lost had the Biden administration and Kamala Harris administration stayed in power and basically ratified these things.”

The Trump administration’s vigilance for U.S. sovereignty goes far beyond the WHO. After a one-year notice, the U.S. also formally withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, and the U.N. recognized that withdrawal on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, the State Department announced America’s withdrawal from 66 other “wasteful, ineffective, and harmful international organizations” identified after an 11-month review.

“What started as a pragmatic framework of international organizations for peace and cooperation has morphed into a sprawling architecture of global governance, often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests. From DEI mandates to ‘gender equity’ campaigns to climate orthodoxy, many international organizations now serve a globalist project” and “seek to constrain American sovereignty,” Rubio said. “We will not continue expending resources, diplomatic capital, and the legitimizing weight of our participation in institutions that are irrelevant to or in conflict with our interests.”

President Trump ordered the review in a February 4, 2025 executive order, “Withdrawing the United States from and Ending Funding to Certain United Nations Organizations and Reviewing United States Support to All International Organizations). On January 7, 2026, he announced the U.S. would end participation in 31 U.N. organizations and 35 non-U.N. international organizations. The list of organizations include: 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Permanent Forum on People of African Descent; U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women; U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change; (the forerunner to the Paris Climate Agreement); and U.N. Population Fund.

It is not immediately clear how many of these entities the U.S. can separate from immediately, and how many require a one-year notice period. What is clear is that the Trump administration is taking seriously its responsibility to defend U.S. sovereignty by thoroughly reviewing America’s international commitments.