Trump must resist WHO’s pandemic power-grab

Excerpt

The World Health Organization is still not doing enough to stop another pandemic. Last month, the UN body adopted a new pandemic treaty by consensus at its annual meeting, but the accord merely doubles down on the WHO’s previous failed policies. President Trump has rightly pledged to oppose this treaty, but he must now take further steps to protect Americans from the WHO’s counterproductive approach. 

The COVID-19 pandemic was a seminal era for the world, and the WHO was created for such crises. It should have rallied the international community to respond aggressively and discover the pandemic’s cause. Instead, the organization allowed the Chinese Communist Party to conceal China’s role in the outbreak, partnering with Beijing to release a now widely discredited report that labeled a lab-leak origin as “extremely unlikely.”

On Trump’s Inauguration Day in January, he rightly issued an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO. He had started this process in his first term, but President Joe Biden reversed it immediately upon taking office.

Anthony Ruggiero is an adjunct senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former White House National Security Council senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense.