In 2025, the United States announced plans to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO). The U.S. completed the withdrawal on Jan. 22, 2026, and the next day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on his website:
The Trump administration’s withdrawal from WHO is a reckless decision that will hurt all Californians and Americans. California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring. We will continue to foster partnerships across the globe and remain at the forefront of public health preparedness, including through our membership as the only state in WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network.
“Newsom has no authority to bind California — or Californians — to the WHO,” notes Rita Barnett-Rose of the California Globe. “California is not a sovereign nation, and its governor cannot conduct foreign policy.” The governor’s action invites a look at the organization he holds in such high esteem.
In Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, Gov. Newsom met with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the first non-physician to head the organization. While serving as Ethiopia’s health minister from 2005 to 2012, Tedros was accused of covering up three separate cholera outbreaks.
In February, 2020, Tedros proclaimed, “The Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak” of COVID-19. The WHO’s Michael Ryan, head of emergencies, praised China’s “consistent message” and echoed China’s claim that the COVID virus was “natural in origin.” Those who saw evidence of a lab origin were branded as conspiracy theorists and excluded from the debate. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, an experienced virologist, even got death threats for saying he believed COVID had leaked from a lab.
Last year, when the U.S. and Argentina first announced plans to withdraw from the WHO, HHS Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Argentine Health Minister Mario Lugones charged that the WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed “serious structural and operational shortcomings.” They also flagged “well-documented concerns regarding the early management of the pandemic and the risks associated with certain types of research.”
That was a reference to gain-of-function research, which makes viruses more lethal and transmissible. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a big fan of the WHO, funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
According to President Trump, the U.S. withdrawal is “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China,” its failure to adopt “urgently needed reforms,” and show independence from “the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.” In addition, “the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.”
As Rose-Barnett explains, Newsom’s hookup with the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network is not just about opposing Trump. The governor’s move “reflects a deeper ideological alignment. Newsom’s COVID leadership in California was defined by rule through executive order, aggressive mandates, suspended safeguards, and prolonged emergency authority with no clear endpoint. That governing style closely mirrored the WHO’s centralized, one-size-fits-all pandemic framework — far more than the approach taken by most U.S. governors. The United States has now rejected that model. Newsom has not.”
As Californians may recall, Gov. Newsom imposed a draconian lockdown regime, with distancing requirements and strict rules for gatherings that warned against “laughing and singing” and the playing of wind instruments. “Don’t forget to keep your mask on in between bites,” the governor added, while failing to follow his own rules.
In November 2020, as Katy Grimes of the California Globe recalled, the unmasked governor and a squad of lobbyists “partied lavishly at the French Laundry restaurant in Napa.” Gov. Newsom maintained the COVID state of emergency until February of 2023 and now seems intent on creating his own version of the Centers for Disease Control to maintain the COVID rules. As the statement to join the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network declares:
In September, Governor Newsom signed AB 144, authorizing California to base immunization guidance on credible, independent medical organizations rather than the CDC’s increasingly politicized Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). That same day, the West Coast Health Alliance announced coordinated winter virus vaccination recommendations, including the 2025–26 COVID-19, influenza, and RSV vaccines.
If Californians thought that Gov. Newsom and his West Coast Health Alliance are a lot like the WHO, it would be hard to blame them.
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
