President Donald Trump’s administration said Friday the United States was rejecting changes agreed last year for the World Health Organization on its pandemic response, saying they violated the country’s sovereignty.
Trump on returning to office on January 20 immediately began his nation’s withdrawal from the UN body, but the State Department said the language from last year would still have been binding on the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is a longtime critic of vaccines, said the changes “risk unwarranted interference with our national sovereign right to make health policy.”
“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,” they said in a joint statement.