President Donald Trump has struck a blow for national sovereignty, withdrawing from one global governance body, defunding another, and placing a third on notice that the U.S. will end its membership without massive ideological reforms.

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday “Withdrawing the United States from and Ending Funding to Certain United Nations Organizations and Reviewing United States Support to All International Organizations.” It ended U.S. participation in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The executive order ends U.S. funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has long and well-established ties to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. “UNRWA facilities have repeatedly been used by Hamas and other terrorist groups to store weapons and build tunnels,” notes a White House fact sheet accompanying the EO.

“The United States will also conduct a review of its membership in UNESCO,” led by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, to determine “how and if UNESCO supports United States interests.” Trump has nominated Elise Stefanik to serve as U.N. Ambassador.

“In particular, the review will include an analysis of any anti-Semitism or anti-Israel sentiment within the organization,” states the executive order.

The UNHRC has long been led by human rights abusers who used the forum to criticize the United States and Israel. Current members of UNHRC include such human rights offenders as China, Cuba, Vietnam, and South Africa. One UNHRC member, Sudan, just received a stinging rebuke on its human rights records from the United Nations. “The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has voiced deep alarm over reports of summary executions of civilians allegedly carried out by fighters and militias allied with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the city of Khartoum North, calling for an immediate halt to the killings,” noted a United Nations new bulletin on January 31.

Yet in 2018, “the year President Trump withdrew from the UNHRC in his first administration, the organization passed more resolutions condemning Israel than Syria, Iran, and North Korea combined,” states the White House.

“President Trump is right to expose and call attention to the catastrophic derailment of institutions like the U.N. Human Rights Council, which has been taken over by human rights violators bent on white-washing their image,” Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “What’s worse, this body was supposed to bring reform to U.N. human rights work, taking over from the U.N. Commission on Human Rights which had become corrupted.”

“I completely support President Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. again from the U.N. Human Rights Council. The UNHRC’s mission is to protect and promote human rights around the world, but it has arguably served as a shield to cover human rights abusers, notably China, from genuine accountability for their gross human rights violations,” Reggie Littlejohn, president of Anti-Globalist International and co-chair of the Sovereignty Coalition, told TWS.

President Trump previously withdrew from UNESCO in 2017, and terminated U.S. membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council and defunded UNRWA in 2018. President Biden rejoined UNESCO in 2023, generously offering to have U.S. taxpayers pay back dues. Previously, President Ronald Reagan withdrew from UNESCO — then a torrent of Soviet and anti-family propaganda — in 1983, until George W. Bush restored U.S. membership in 2002.

The exodus may portend a broader movement asserting national sovereignty in the months to come. Within six months, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.N. Ambassador will review all international organizations, treaties, and compacts to which the U.S. belongs to determine if they are “contrary to the interests of the United States and whether such organizations, conventions, or treaties can be reformed.”

Trump already signed an executive order initiating the process to withdraw from the World Health Organization.

“Sadly, the U.N. human rights effort — which was birthed on the heels of the Holocaust and based on the noble idea of human rights tethered to the reality that every human being is created in God’s image and is deserving of protection — has become a club giving cover to human rights-abusing governments,” Weber told TWS. “While it is important that the United States be a part of the discussion of global human rights issues, the UNHRC has burned through the fuel of its credibility and has largely ceased to function as an honest human rights broker.”

“If the UNHRC can’t be salvaged (and it may not be able to be), the United States should use its power and prestige to lay out a vision for a new way of tackling human rights globally and only invite partners into that discussion who share that vision,” Weber concluded.