Overview
- A presidential memorandum instructs agencies to halt participation and funding in 31 United Nations entities and 35 non‑UN organizations as soon as legally possible.
- The withdrawals include the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, deepening the administration’s break with global climate governance.
- The State Department said the targeted bodies are redundant, mismanaged, wasteful or at odds with U.S. sovereignty, and it signaled that additional reviews remain underway.
- Environmental and scientific leaders, including Gina McCarthy and Rachel Cleetus, condemned the move as harmful to U.S. leadership and climate efforts, with WRI’s David Widawsky calling it a strategic blunder.
- Legal analysts highlight constitutional ambiguity over treaty exits, raising the prospect of court challenges and uncertainty for any future effort to rejoin.