Staff Reports
President Donald Trump is diving back into the fight with the World Health Organization, a battle he’s well-acquainted with from his first term. While the former president made waves back in 2016 with his promise to yank the United States out of the politically-influenced clutches of the WHO, it seems that old habits die hard—especially for the bureaucratic behemoths at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Once again installed in the Oval Office, the 47th president wasted no time in issuing an executive order in January, reaffirming his commitment to sever ties with the WHO. His reasoning is crystal clear; the organization has more than a handful of blunders on its résumé, particularly regarding the mishandling of COVID-19, which originated in its favorite buddy, China. Trump’s frustrations are valid as he calls out the WHO’s ineffectiveness and financial unfairness. After all, why should the American taxpayer foot the bill while China with its 1.4 billion people pays next to nothing in dues?
CDC Admits That It's Openly Defying RFK Jr. and Trump: Report https://t.co/lBs0fLYJeA
— Lora Connor (@LoraConnor7) February 26, 2025
But it seems the CDC—forever a shadow of its own bureaucracy—has chosen to ignore Trump’s clarion call to stop any association with the WHO. In a twist of bureaucratic irony that only Washington could conjure, the CDC decided it would still “actively participate virtually” in an upcoming WHO conference on flu vaccines. Because nothing screams “competence” like giving a global entity that has demonstrated it can’t even be trusted with a basic health pandemic, the keys to future vaccine strategy talks.
To add to the comedy of errors, the FDA jumped on the same bandwagon and chose to ignore the marching orders from the Trump administration as well. It stands to reason that these agencies would need to elbow past the new executive order if they wanted to join the fun at the WHO’s latest conference. One has to wonder if the bureaucrats at these agencies sat around with little Post-it notes labeled “Forget About the President” before making their plans.
In their defense, perhaps the CDC and FDA felt that flu vaccines are an area where they have some level of expertise—too bad the rest of America is questioning their judgment after the handling of the last few years. By keeping their participation quiet, they may have thought they were outsmarting Trump, but this is a classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing—or perhaps simply choosing to ignore it.
As of early Tuesday afternoon, Trump had not publicly addressed this latest bout of bureaucratic disdain for presidential directives. But one can only imagine what thoughts were spinning in his mind—surely, some choice words for those defiant bureaucrats who keep pretending they’re operating on their own separate agenda. The challenge remains: can the Trump administration rein in the wayward agencies, or will they simply become a punchline in the long-running sitcom that is Washington, D.C.?
