America is officially out of the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Today, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization, freeing itself from its constraints, as President [Donald] Trump promised on his first day in office,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., declared in a Jan. 22 joint statement.
“This action 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 the latest move by an administration that has been highly skeptical of membership in a number of global organizations that, in Trump’s view, and that of many conservatives, compromise the sovereignty of the United States and operate counter to America’s interests. In January 2025, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Accord, which aims to limit global warming, and on Jan. 7, he withdrew en masse from 66 U.N.-sponsored climate and social justice organizations, among them the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Trump’s decision to quit the WHO is “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,” a White House statement declared.
In this week’s executive order, dated Jan. 20, Trump directed that all U.S. funding for the WHO cease and all official U.S. representatives to the U.N. health subsidiary be recalled.
Under the terms of the original agreement establishing U.S. membership, the United States must give the WHO one year’s notice in order to withdraw from the organization. Trump gave such notice to the WHO upon taking office in 2025.
At that time, the WHO responded that it “regrets the announcement that the United States of America intends to withdraw from the Organization.”
