The United States will leave the World Health Organization, President Donald Trump said on Monday, saying the global health agency had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.

Trump said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S. that were disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.

“World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said at the signing of an executive order on the withdrawal, shortly after his inauguration to a second term.

The WHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When asked about Trump’s decision and remarks, China’s foreign ministry told a regular press briefing on Tuesday that the role of the WHO in global health governance should only be strengthened, not weakened.

“China will continue to support the WHO in fulfilling its responsibilities, and deepen international public health cooperation,” said Guo Jiakun, a ministry spokesperson.

The move means the U.S. will leave the United Nations health agency in 12 months’ time and stop all financial contributions to its work. The United States is by far the WHO’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18% of its overall funding. WHO’s most recent two-year budget, for 2024-2025, was $6.8 billion.

The U.S. departure will likely put at risk programs across the organization, according to several experts both inside and outside the WHO, notably those tackling tuberculosis, the world’s biggest infectious disease killer, as well as HIV/AIDS and other health emergencies.

Trump’s order said the administration would cease negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty while the withdrawal is in progress. U.S. government personnel working with the WHO will be recalled and reassigned, and the government will look for partners to take over necessary WHO activities, according to the order.

The government will review, rescind, and replace the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy as soon as practicable, the order said.

The next-largest donors to the WHO are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, although most of that funding goes to polio eradication, and the global vaccine group Gavi, followed by the European Commission and the World Bank. The next-largest national donor is Germany, which contributes around 3% of the WHO’s funding.

Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO is not unexpected. He took steps to quit the body in 2020, during his first term as president, accusing the WHO of aiding China’s efforts to “mislead the world” about the origins of COVID.

WHO vigorously denies the allegation and says it continues to press Beijing to share data to determine whether COVID emerged from human contact with infected animals or due to research into similar viruses in a domestic laboratory.

Trump also suspended U.S. contributions to the agency, costing it nearly $200 million in 2020-2021 versus the previous two-year budgets, as it battled the world’s worst health emergency in a century.

Under U.S. law, leaving the WHO requires a one-year notice period, and the payment of any outstanding fees. Before the U.S. withdrawal could be completed last time, Joe Biden won the country’s presidential election and put a stop to it on his first day in office on Jan. 20, 2021.

-Reuters

Follow the Sports Village Square channel on WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vaz7mEIGk1FxU8YIXb0H

Newly sworn-in U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he will declare illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border a national emergency, send troops there and ramp up deportations of criminal offenders, outlining the crackdown in his inaugural address.

Trump said he would invoke a 1798 wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act to target foreign gang members in the U.S., a legal authority last used to detain noncitizens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent in internment camps during World War Two. Trump also said he would designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Shortly after the inauguration, U.S. border authorities said they had shut down outgoing President Joe Biden’s CBP One legal entry program, which had allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. legally by scheduling an appointment on an app. Existing appointments were canceled, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Trump, a Republican, recaptured the White House after promising to intensify border security and deport record numbers of migrants. While Trump criticized Democrat Biden for high levels of illegal immigration during his presidency, migrant arrests fell dramatically after Biden toughened his policies in June and as Mexico stepped up enforcement.

Republicans say large-scale deportations are necessary after millions of immigrants crossed illegally during Biden’s presidency. There were roughly 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally or with a temporary status at the start of 2022, according to a U.S. government estimate, a figure that some analysts now place at 13 million to 14 million.

“As commander-in-chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do,” Trump said in his address.

Americans have grown less welcoming toward immigrants without legal status since Trump’s first presidency, but remain wary of harsh measures such as using detention camps, a Reuters/Ipsos poll in December found.

BIDEN ENTRY PROGRAM SHUT DOWN

In several Mexican border cities, migrants saw their appointments on Biden’s CBP One app canceled just after Trump took office. Some 280,000 people had been logging into the app daily to secure an appointment as of Jan. 7.

In Matamoros, Mexico, a group of migrants from the central Mexican state of Zacatecas arrived at a legal border crossing at midday but were turned back by border authorities who said all appointments were now void, they told a Reuters witness.

Honduran Denia Mendez, sitting in the courtyard of a migrant shelter in Piedras Negras, Mexico – across from Eagle Pass, Texas – opened her inbox 30 minutes after Trump became president. She stared at an email for several minutes, reading it over and over, before her eyes welled up.

“They canceled my appointment,” she said. Several other migrants, who just minutes ago were laughing as they fed potato chips to pigeons, huddled around her phone, their faces suddenly grave.

Mendez’s 15-year-old daughter Sofia kept trying to get into the CBP One app.

“They’re not going to let you into the app, baby,” Mendez told her softly.

BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP TARGETED

Trump intends to challenge U.S. citizenship for children born to parents in the U.S. illegally, an incoming Trump official said earlier in the day. So-called “birthright citizenship” stems from an amendment to the U.S. Constitution and any move to restrict it will almost certainly trigger legal challenges.

Trump also plans to suspend the U.S. refugee resettlement program for at least four months and will order a review of security to see if travelers from certain nations should be subject to a travel ban, the official said.

Trump said in his address that he would reinstate his first-term “remain in Mexico” program, which forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for the outcome of the U.S. cases. Biden ended the program in 2021, saying migrants were stuck waiting in squalid conditions.

“All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said.

Mexico’s presidency, foreign ministry, and economy ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump’s plans. In a regular press conference on Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called for calm and insisted her government had to see the details of Trump’s actions before responding.

-Reuters

Donald Trump pledged to rescue America from what he described as years of betrayal and decline after he was sworn in as president on Monday, prioritizing a crackdown on illegal immigration and portraying himself as a national saviour chosen by God.

“For American citizens, January 20, 2025, is Liberation Day,” Trump, 78, said inside the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, the symbol of U.S. democracy that was invaded on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of Trump supporters intent on reversing his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.

The half-hour speech echoed some of the themes he sounded at his first inauguration in 2017, when he spoke of the “American carnage” of crime and job loss that he said had ravaged the country.

The inauguration completes a triumphant return for a political disruptor who was twice impeached, survived two assassination attempts, was convicted in a criminal trial and faced charges for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss. He is the first president in more then a century to win a second term after losing the White House.

“I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump said, referring to the assassin’s bullet that grazed his ear in July.

Trump is the first felon to serve as president after a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.

“Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback,” he said. “I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do in America. The impossible is what we do best.”

While Trump sought to portray himself as a peacemaker and unifier, his speech was often sharply partisan. He repeated false claims from his campaign that other countries were emptying their prisons into America and voiced familiar and unfounded grievances over his criminal prosecutions.

With Biden seated nearby, affecting a polite smile, Trump issued a stinging indictment of his predecessor’s policies from immigration to foreign affairs and outlined a raft of executive actions aimed at blocking border crossings, ending federal diversity programs and overhauling international trade.

“First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border,” he said. “All illegal entry will be immediately halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”

Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favor with the incoming administration – including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump’s family.

Trump said he would send astronauts to plant the U.S. flag on Mars, prompting Musk – who has long talked about colonizing the planet – to throw his hands up in celebration.

Trump vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and repeated his intention to take back control of the Panama Canal, one of several foreign policy pronouncements that have caused consternation among U.S. allies.

TRIUMPHANT RETURN

Following his address, Trump stopped by the Capitol’s visitor center and delivered an even longer, informal speech to supporters reminiscent of his freewheeling campaign rallies.

In the later remarks, Trump struck a sharply different tone, voicing suspicion about election processes, calling people charged with taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack “hostages” and suggesting the congressional probe into his actions around that day was illegal.

“I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” Trump said.

Trump took the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend” the U.S. Constitution at 12:01 p.m. ET (1701 GMT), administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. His vice president, JD Vance, was sworn in just before him.

Outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, was seated next to Biden in a section with former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, arrived with her husband Bill, but Obama’s wife, Michelle, chose not to attend.

The ceremony was moved indoors due to the extreme cold gripping much of the country.

Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration and has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was rigged.

Biden, in one of his last official acts, pardoned several people whom Trump has threatened with retaliation, including former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, former Republican U.S. Representative Liz Cheney and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. He also pardoned five family members just minutes before leaving office, citing fears that Trump would target them.

Trump acknowledged he was taking office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and said he would work to honor the civil rights leader’s legacy. At the same time, he said he would issue orders to scrap federal diversity programs and require the government to recognize only genders assigned at birth.

“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump said, as Democratic U.S. Representative Sarah McBride, the first transgender person to serve in Congress, quietly smiled in the audience.

Trump will not immediately impose new tariffs, instead directing federal agencies to evaluate trade relationships with Canada, China and Mexico, a Trump official said, an unexpected development that unleashed a broad slide in the U.S. dollar and a rally in global stock markets on a day when U.S. financial markets were closed.

Some of the executive orders are likely to face legal challenges.

DISRUPTIVE FORCE

As he did in 2017, Trump enters office as a disruptive force, vowing to remake the federal government and expressing deep skepticism about the U.S.-led alliances that have shaped post-World War Two global politics.

Police separated a group of 40 supporters of the militant far-right group the Proud Boys, backers of Trump whose former leader Enrique Tarrio was among those imprisoned for Jan. 6, and a dozen counter protesters in downtown DC.

“Whose streets? Our streets,” the Proud Boys chanted as several protesters aimed loud speakers playing sirens at them. Each side shouted expletives at the other

He returns to Washington emboldened after winning the national popular vote over Harris by more than 2 million votes thanks to a groundswell of voter frustration over persistent inflation, though he still fell just short of a 50% majority.

Trump, who surpassed Biden as the oldest president ever to be sworn in, will enjoy Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress. His advisers have outlined plans to replace nonpartisan bureaucrats with hand-picked loyalists.

Trump’s influence was already felt in the Israel-Hamas announcement last week of a ceasefire deal. Trump, whose envoy joined the negotiations in Qatar, had warned of “hell to pay” if Hamas did not release its hostages before the inauguration.

Unlike in 2017, when he filled many top jobs with institutionalists, Trump has prioritized fealty over experience in nominating a bevy of controversial cabinet picks, some of whom are outspoken critics of the agencies they have been tapped to lead.

Even as he prepared to retake office, Trump continued to expand his business ventures, raising billions in market value by launching a “meme coin” crypto token that prompted ethical and regulatory questions.

The inauguration took place amid heavy security after a campaign highlighted by an increase in political violence.

The traditional parade down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House was moved indoors to the Capital One Arena, where Trump held a victory rally on Sunday.

-Reuters