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The United States left the World Health Organisation in January, the US flag no longer flies outside WHO headquarters in Geneva, and America has cut off all funding and engagement with the organisation. If that is not leaving, I don’t know what is.
The WHO, however, is pretending none of it happened.
Back in 1948, when America joined the WHO, it insisted on a clause giving it the right to withdraw, subject to one year's notice and payment of whatever dues the WHO said it owed. Trump gave the notice, but is not paying, and the WHO is using that to claim America never actually left.
This week at the World Health Assembly, that position was formalised when member states voted, without debate or objection, to suspend America's voting rights from May 2027. While Trump will not lose any sleep over that, what matters is that the WHO gets to keep treating America as a member with an unpaid bill of around $280 million, rather than a country that has walked out.
The WHO is desperate to get that money, which is why it is playing a long game. When a Democrat administration next returns to The White House, it will walk America straight back into the WHO and settle its “debts” on the way in. The WHO knows this and is counting on it.
The only way to shut that door permanently is for Congress to repeal the very law that took America into the WHO in the first place, the 1948 legislation that made membership possible and set the terms under which it could one day be reversed. Until that happens, the risk of the United States returning to the WHO remains.