Just before the July 19 deadline that would have bound the U.S. to newly amended International Health Regulations (IHR) formulated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Trump administration announced Friday that it had formally rejected the post-COVID pandemic agreement that critics say encroaches on national sovereignty, encourages censorship on public health matters as well as increased surveillance of citizens, and calls for onerous financial commitments.

As noted in a joint statement from the Department of Health and Human Services and the State Department, the amended IHR “would give the WHO the ability to order global lockdowns, travel restrictions, or any other measures it sees fit to respond to nebulous ‘potential public health risks.’” The press release further noted that the regulations would have become binding if not rejected by July 19, regardless of the fact that the U.S. withdrew from the WHO in January.

As reported by The Washington Stand, the WHO formally adopted the new IHR as part of a global pandemic agreement in May after three years of negotiations with member countries. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. did not participate in the adoption process, which was reportedly commandeered by 180 delegates from communist China. The agreement stipulated that nations must contribute “20% of their real time production of safe, quality and effective vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics” to the WHO. It also called for imposing “social measures” during future pandemics including “physical distancing,” “mask-wearing,” and “contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine” — measures which notably failed to stop the spread of COVID during the 2020 pandemic. The agreement further called on nations to “prevent misinformation, disinformation and stigmatization” during pandemics.

“The proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations open the door to the kind of narrative management, propaganda, and censorship that we saw during the COVID pandemic,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remarked in announcing the U.S. rejection of the agreement. “The United States can cooperate with other nations without jeopardizing our civil liberties, without undermining our Constitution, and without ceding away America’s treasured sovereignty.”

“Terminology throughout the amendments to the 2024 International Health Regulations is vague and broad, risking WHO-coordinated international responses that focus on political issues like solidarity, rather than rapid and effective actions,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio added. “Our Agencies have been and will continue to be clear: we will put Americans first in all our actions and we will not tolerate international policies that infringe on Americans’ speech, privacy, or personal liberties.”

Members of Congress applauded the Trump administration’s move to extricate the U.S. from the WHO regulations.

“The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how the incompetency and corruption at the WHO demands comprehensive reforms. Instead of addressing its disastrous public health policies during COVID, the WHO wants International Health Regulation amendments and a pandemic treaty to declare public health emergencies in member states, which could include failed draconian responses like business and school closures and vaccine mandates,” remarked Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “… I fully support the Trump administration’s decision to reject the IHR amendments.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) concurred, stating, “The United States must never cede our sovereignty to any international entity or organization. I applaud Secretary Kennedy and Secretary Rubio for rejecting the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ill-advised International Health Regulations (IHR) amendments. … The WHO, a widely discredited international organization, lost any potential credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we must ensure no future administration grants them any legitimacy or further power over the health of Americans.”

Foreign policy experts like Frank Gaffney, president of the Institute for the American Future, agree, saying that exiting the WHO regulations would mark an important reversal from the previous administration.

“[T]he Biden administration … was only too happy to [cooperated with] global governance advocates like the World Health Organization, like the United Nations, like the World Economic Forum and associated multinational companies who have been driving this train that what we need is a new world order, one that is run by elites who are not accountable, who are not elected to rule us, but who will nonetheless have the authority [over us],” he observed during Thursday’s edition of “Washington Watch.”

Gaffney went on to detail how the pandemic agreement enables the WHO to “unilaterally declare [a pandemic] exists and then to dictate what nations have to … do to implement his guidelines for addressing that public health emergency of international concern. So that’s one way you would see a direct affront to our sovereignty. … [A]nother is a sort of surveillance state quality. They want to create digital IDs for every man, woman, and child on the planet — they want everybody in the name of having the ability to monitor their health conditions, to provide intensive personal details about them.”

“[T]hese international health regulations [are an] assault on our sovereignty and personal freedoms,” Gaffney concluded.