BREAKING: US leaves WHO

The US has officially withdrawn from the World Health Organization, according to a tweet from Senator Bob Menendez's office.

He wrote that "Congress received notification that POTUS officially withdrew the US from the @WHO in the midst of a pandemic.

"To call Trump’s response to COVID chaotic & incoherent doesn't do it justice. This won't protect American lives or interests—it leaves Americans sick & America alone."

It was in April that President Donald Trump first announced that the US would consider putting a hold on funding to the massive NGO, saying that "The WHO... receives vast amounts of money from the United States... And they actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban at the time I did it. And they were wrong, they've been wrong about a lot of things. They've had a lot of information early, they seem to be very China-centric."

This was after the WHO had come out against border closings, and in reference to the China-WHO joint consensus that said Beijing's numbers on virus case counts and fatalities was accurate. Trump claimed that they were not.

Later that month, WHO demanded that the funding be restored. However, the US did not comply. In May, funding was fully frozen, when Trump sent a letter to WHO executive director Tedros Ghebreyesus, issuing his own demands for accuracy and accountability.

In the letter, Trump noted the "serious concerns" found in a review of WHO procedure and issuance of guidance, specifically with regard to their "alarming lack of independence from the People's Republic of China."

The evidence Trump stated included the WHO's ignoring of credible reports of a virus from Wuhan in early December 2019. There were reports from Taiwan, as well as in the medical journal The Lancet, which detailed China's slow response in reporting to the WHO, and the WHO's "conspicuous silence" with regard to China's failures to act to contain the coronavirus.