Trump Administration Rejects UN Pandemic Preparedness Declaration

The Trump administration rejected a UN pandemic preparedness declaration over concerns about WHO influence and U.S. sovereignty, joining other countries whose objections prevented its adoption by consensus. 

The Trump administration declined to support a nonbinding UN declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response at a September 25 meeting during the General Assembly’s 81st session in New York.

Mandated by resolution 79/333, the meeting reviewed progress on a pandemic preparedness declaration adopted in 2023. Its theme called for a multilateral approach guided by “equity and solidarity.”

According to Health Policy Watch, the U.S. representative said the United States could not support the new text because of “divisive ideologies that lack definitional consensus” and references to unfinished negotiations on pathogen access and benefit sharing.

The U.S. statement said the country remained ready to work with partners to strengthen preparedness and “stop dangerous outbreaks at their source.”

The proposed pathogen access and benefit sharing arrangement would have countries share virus samples in exchange for access to tests, medicines and vaccines. It remains under negotiation as a follow-up to the WHO Pandemic Agreement, which WHO member states adopted in 2025. The United States did not take part in finalizing that agreement.

The U.S. position at the UN follows actions the Trump administration has taken regarding the WHO since January 2025. On January 20, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14155, beginning the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO. The order cited the WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic,” failure to adopt reforms, and inability to remain independent of political influence from member states.

It also said the WHO demanded payments from the United States far out of proportion to those of other countries. WHO figures show the United States contributed $1.284 billion in the 2022–2023 budget period, more than any other donor. According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States was assessed 22 percent of the WHO’s core budget for 2020–2021, compared with 12 percent for China.

Section 4 of Trump’s executive order directed the Secretary of State to end U.S. negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations. The order also stated that actions taken to implement either would not be binding on the United States.

WHO member states adopted the Pandemic Agreement on May 20, 2025. In a video statement that day, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it would “lock in all of the dysfunction of the WHO pandemic response” and that the United States would not participate.

On July 18, 2025, the State Department and HHS rejected amendments to the International Health Regulations adopted in 2024. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kennedy said the decision would “protect our national sovereignty” and prevent international officials from shaping U.S. domestic policy. They said the amendments gave the WHO more influence over pandemic declarations and were developed without adequate public input.

The U.S. withdrawal from the WHO took effect on January 22, 2026. In a joint statement, Rubio and Kennedy said the United States would pursue global health security through “direct, bilateral, and results-driven partnerships.” The State Department has also signed bilateral health agreements covering disease surveillance and outbreak preparedness.

China also factored into the administration’s objections to the WHO. Executive Order 14155 said China “contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO” than the United States. In May 2025, Kennedy said the WHO “capitulated to political pressure from China.” The administration’s July 2025 statement said the IHR amendments failed to address the WHO’s susceptibility to political influence and censorship, “most notably from China.”

The declaration had been expected to be adopted by consensus at the September 25 meeting. According to Health Policy Watch, objections from the United States and several other countries blocked consensus, so the text was not adopted. General Assembly President Khalilur Rahman, Bangladesh’s foreign minister, said it had broad support but that “there continue to be some observations.” He said member states would consider it further but gave no date. In a press release, the WHO said it expected the text to be forwarded to the General Assembly for further consideration.

Italy also objected to the declaration. It said it did not support the WHO Pandemic Agreement or the 2024 amendments to the International Health Regulations, arguing that they would expand the WHO’s role beyond its mandate and impinge on national sovereignty. Italy also said terms in the declaration, including “infodemic management,” “misinformation” and “disinformation,” lack agreed definitions.

The European Union, Germany and India also raised objections or reservations. The EU said it supported the declaration’s overall objective but opposed language on compulsory licensing of health products during emergencies, which it said could undermine intellectual property. It called for voluntary technology transfer on mutually agreed terms, a position Germany also took. India said the nonbinding declaration must not prejudge ongoing negotiations on pathogen access and benefit sharing. China and Russia addressed the meeting without stating a position on the text.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09/trump-administration-rejects-un-pandemic-preparedness-declaration/

Conrad Black: Mark Carney's EU blunder

Before further escalation against the U.S., the prime minister should consider the vast differences in size between the two economies

Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on September 17, 2026. 

I have the painful duty of advising that I consider the basic points Prime Minister Mark Carney tried to make in his address on Sept. 27 to the European Parliament in Strasbourg profoundly mistaken. Readers should be aware that the European Parliament has no power whatsoever. The member states nominate commissioners in the different administrative fields, like cabinet ministers. The government apparatus in Brussels deluges the entire membership with decrees purporting to regulate an almost unlimited variety of activities, most of which the principal Atlantic English-speaking countries have considered unsuitable for government interference.

The great achievement of the European Common Market, and then the European Economic Community was to reduce economic barriers between the Western European countries and to promote the peaceful and conciliatory settlement of differences between the constituent countries. This was done in lock-step with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which under unquestioned American leadership, has guaranteed the security of almost all of the member states of the evolving European Community. Eventually, President Reagan‘s plan to shelter the western world under what aspired to be a leak-proof anti-missile defence, confronted the Soviet Union, which was spending approximately half of its GDP on military matters, to contemplate the loss of it status as an equivalent nuclear deterrent power to the United States. The reform regime of President Gorbachev did not possess the will of Russian rulers from Peter the Great to Stalin and Khrushchev and even Brezhnev to suppress ethnic and political dissent in the polyglot, Soviet Union, and the whole Soviet concept became demoralized and simply disintegrated.

This inspired American strategic policy of containment of Soviet communism, as well as the heavy economic assistance of the United States and proportionately Canada, under the Marshall Plan and parallel activities revived war-ravaged Western Europe as relatively free market democracies. The relevance of this to Carney‘s address is that he advised the European Parliament that “Freedom was won thanks to the heroism of the European resistance during the war.” Freedom was in fact, won in two stages. In the first stage, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, proportionately to their populations, liberated France, and Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Norway, and occupied approximately three quarters of Germany. As many millions of Germans plodded westward ahead of the Soviet Red Army, the Western Allied armies ended up organizing the post-war government of nearly 80 per cent of the Germans.

The Americans, British, and Canadians with modest participation from others, resurrected liberty in Western Europe. Canada’s participation was especially remarkable as they were almost all volunteers and Canada, unlike Britain and the United States, had never been attacked or threatened by the Axis Powers. It was a courageous and unprovoked contribution to the pursuit of freedom throughout the world.

In the second phase of freedom’s triumph, the patient and comprehensive containment strategy devised and executed under American leadership throughout the Cold War emancipated the former Soviet satellite countries and several republics of the U.S.S.R. The principal benefactor in this triumph of human liberty was the United States of America, resentment of the power and influence of which, though not explicitly stated, was incandescently clear in the prime minister‘s message in Strasbourg, which renders that message incoherent, to say the least. Even in recent years, the Europeans were effectively financing the aggressive Russian war against Ukraine by buying Russian oil and gas, while beseeching the Americans to assert their influence across the ocean again and assist Ukraine in repulsing the Russians in the heart of Europe. Canada has been commendably unambiguous in its support of the Ukrainians and played a significant part in training up the Ukrainian forces in the arts and skills of self-defence.

The second serious problem with Carney‘s address is that while the central structures of European government have contributed admirably to assuring relative cooperation amongst the 27 constituent countries and massaging what would be called in Canada equalization payments, from the richer to the less developed areas of Europe, as an administration, it has not been successful. As I mentioned in this space last week, in 2008, Europe and the U.S. had approximately equal GDP’s and the United States now has 140 per cent of the GDP of the EU.

The general increase of prosperity in the world and the decline of poverty and illiteracy, as well as the spread of democracy and the free market economy, have been magnificent in the years since the end of the Second World War. This has been the third longest period of absence of extensive wars between the principal peoples or governments, after the Roman Imperial Peace from 96 to 180 AD and the Pax Britannica from 1815 to 1914. But Europe has done terrible damage to itself in economic competitiveness, largely by excessive commitment to suppression of fossil fuel use, a cause strenuously championed by Mark Carney for many years, including, quite inappropriately, from his position of governor of the Bank of England. This is the largest single element in the comparative economic decline of Europe and of Canada and is already being painfully reversed in parts of Europe. This horribly mistaken policy in much of the western world has caused $16 trillion to be spent combatting climate change without saving a single life and in a period when the world’s temperature has not moved much in 30 years. Carney hinted in Strasbourg that he wished to continue this policy.

Europe has become so enfeebled, the Chinese automobile industry has acquired about 10-12 per cent of the European auto market, and Brussels is reduced to asking China voluntarily to cap its penetration at 15 per cent, which the People’s Republic has naturally refused to do. (Carney also made a mockery of the independence of the Bank of England by turning it into a bellicose parrot of the Cameron government in the Brexit debate, scaremongering and promising the collapse of British prosperity if it departed the European Union. It is sobering for Canadians to recognize what little value he attached to the British institutions of government that have evolved fairly continuously over more than 800 years-he was happy to warn and frighten the British into abandoning all of this in favour of the unfledged and authoritarian machinery of Brussels.)

In accord with his practice of invoking famous intellectual leaders of the past with whose actual works comparatively few of his listeners would be familiar, Carney produced a lot of elaborate metaphors about the transplantation of trees between Vimy and Milliken, Ont., and imputed to Johann von Goethe a much less complicated view of national sovereignty and human liberty than he actually advocated. Goethe was a friend of Napoleon and had mixed views on the wars of alleged liberation of his time. Finally, in his complicated paean to the reticulation of the roots and branches of European and Canadian trees, the prime minister completely ignored the fact that Canada sends approximately 70 per cent of its exports to the United States and only six per cent to Europe. He ignored the fact that while President Trump has engaged in a good deal of verbal pyrotechnics, his actual tariff increases only apply to about six per cent of Canadian exports. Before escalating his war with the American president further, Mr. Carney should take careful measure of the risks of doing so: the United States is responsible for a third of Canada‘s economy, and we are responsible for three percent of the economy of the United States.

Underlying it all is Carney’s contention that “a strong economy is not an end in itself, but the means to a just society.” This is consistent with his turgid and striving book: “Values, Building a Better World for All,” which is less an economic program than a field guide for polysyllabic eagle scouts. His address in Strasbourg was less a romantic escalation of Canada‘s relations with Europe than a wistful reflection on the failure of Canada and Europe to produce a superior political ethos to that of the United States while being economically uncompetitive with it.

Until we can recover the comparatively equivalent prosperity with the United States that we enjoyed up until 10 years ago, we are in no position for our prime minister to go to the Rhine and preach Wagnerian forest murmurs to the Lorelei as he did last week.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-mark-carneys-eu-blunder

Bruce Campbell says Hollywood studios left ‘very sour’ taste after he was 'kicked out' of lead role

The 'Evil Dead' star wrote, directed and produced 'Ernie & Emma' with wife Ida Gearon in their home state of Oregon

 Bruce Campbell is taking a chainsaw to the Hollywood playbook.

The "Evil Dead" star is ditching the traditional studio system for "Ernie & Emma," his new independent film that puts him firmly in the driver's seat after decades of navigating Hollywood — and after one early studio experience left a bad taste.

"The first studio film I ever did, I got kicked out of the lead," Campbell told Fox News Digital. "The movie was re-edited, retitled and never came out. So, the taste in my mouth from studios is very sour."

KEVIN SORBO BLASTS HOLLYWOOD 'BLACKLISTING' OF CONSERVATIVES AS 'SEVENTH GRADE MEAN GIRLS' CULTURE

Actor Bruce Campbell wrote, directed and produced "Ernie & Emma."

That experience stuck with the cult-favorite actor, who said he has long wanted to make a project without studio executives calling the shots.

"It was time to be unbridled in my life," Campbell said.

WATCH: BRUCE CAMPBELL SAYS HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS LEFT 'VERY SOUR' TASTE IN HIS MOUTH

Video

The decision carries extra weight following Campbell's cancer diagnosis, which he disclosed in March. 

Campbell said earlier this month on "The Adam Carolla Show" podcast that doctors had given him an estimated five years to live, but he remains focused on treatment and continuing his work.

The actor wrote, directed, produced and stars in "Ernie & Emma," which he made independently with his wife and longtime partner, Ida Gearon.

For Campbell, the project represents a return to the kind of creative freedom he experienced early in his career with "The Evil Dead."

Bruce Campbell plays Ernie.

TAYLOR SHERIDAN TAKES SWIPE AT LOS ANGELES AFTER BUILDING TV EMPIRE FROM TEXAS

"The very first movie we did, ‘Evil Dead,’ was the only other movie I've ever done free and clear of the studio system," he said. "So, I liked the taste of it early on."

"I wanted to do something like this for a long time, and my wife finally said, ‘Quit talking about it. Let's do it. Let's pull the trigger. Let's make this movie," he recalled.

WATCH: ACTOR BRUCE CAMPBELL TOUTS MAKING FILM WITH WIFE: 'WE NEVER ARGUED ONCE'

Video

'BLUE BLOODS' STAR JENNIFER ESPOSITO SAYS SHE WALKED AWAY FROM HOLLYWOOD AFTER YEARS OF REJECTION AND ‘ABUSE’

The actor has little interest in pretending creative control is easy to maintain when someone else is financing the production.

"Creative freedom is absolutely everything," Campbell said. "If you consider yourself an artiste, or you're in the arts, the only way that artists have to deal with people, outside of themselves, is to go look for money."

Bruce Campbell appears during a memorial scene in "Ernie & Emma." 

"Ernie & Emma" marks a dramatic departure from the horror and action roles that made Campbell a genre icon. 

The movie follows Ernie Tyler, a small-town pear salesman who embarks on a road trip through Pear Valley, Oregon, after his beloved wife, Emma, dies.

Emma leaves Ernie a detailed list of instructions for scattering her ashes, sending him on a journey through grief, love and the possibility of starting over.

Campbell and Gearon filmed the movie entirely in southern Oregon, turning their home state into the backdrop for the story — and their own lives into an unconventional production setup.

Gearon, a longtime costume designer, encouraged Campbell to keep the shoot close to home.

"She goes, ‘Bruce, we should shoot in Oregon. You should sleep in your own bed. You should [be having lunch] at the house,’" Campbell said. "And so, I did, and it was a very bizarre experience, but I'll never go back now."

Bruce Campbell said his wife encouraged him to shoot the movie close to home. 

"Best part of working with my wife was that, for once, we didn't argue," he said. "We argue a lot and when we made the movie we never argued once because we had a singular goal, singular vision."

After more than three decades together, Campbell said his relationship with Gearon has evolved into something deeper than romance.

"Boy, my wife, she is rock solid. She's a good human being from A to Z. I trust her," he said.

"The other day we said to each other, we've been together so long we're actually family now."

Campbell is taking "Ernie & Emma" on the road with a nationwide screening tour at Alamo Drafthouse locations, following earlier sold-out screenings at independent theaters.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/bruce-campbell-hollywood-studios-left-very-sour-taste-kicked-out-lead-role

Trump Says Oil Prices Will Plummet as Record Flow Moves Through Hormuz

President Donald Trump says Americans could soon see oil prices come “plummeting down” as record volumes move through the Strait of Hormuz and his administration prepares for another round of talks with Iran.

The president made the prediction Sunday while speaking to reporters, tying lower prices to an end to the conflict and saying that outcome would come soon. He also said the United States had moved a record amount of oil through the strategic waterway.

That is a major development for families and businesses that have watched every turn in the war ripple through fuel markets. The Strait carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum liquids consumption, so every tanker that clears it safely matters far beyond the Persian Gulf.

Axios reported that Trump expects renewed negotiations with Iran this week. A U.S. defense official told the outlet that 22 million barrels moved through the strait Friday night, confirming the extraordinary scale behind the president’s claim.

The figure does not mean the crisis is over. It means the administration has created a meaningful opening in a chokepoint Tehran tried to weaponize against the global economy.

That distinction matters. Oil prices respond to current supply and to what traders believe could happen next.

If tankers continue moving, insurers regain confidence and negotiations reduce the risk of another closure, the fear premium built into every barrel can shrink quickly. If Iran reverses course, prices can move the other way just as fast.

The White House is therefore trying to do two things at once: keep physical energy moving and force a political decision in Tehran.

The administration is using leverage to make diplomacy possible.

Trump rejected Iran’s proposed seven-day arrangement, which would have offered a temporary pause without resolving the larger threat to navigation. Now, the administration appears to be pressing for terms that produce a more durable result.

That is the right standard. A short pause that leaves Tehran free to restart pressure on shipping would simply postpone the next shock.

American consumers do not need a ceremonial agreement. They need a strait that stays open, energy that keeps flowing and an adversary that understands closing an international trade route carries real consequences.

The president’s price prediction is still a forecast, not a guarantee. Refinery capacity, inventories, global demand and regional security will all influence what drivers ultimately pay.

But the administration now has a concrete result to point to: 22 million barrels moved through the world’s most closely watched energy corridor in a single operation.

Those barrels reached the market.

Trump also reminded reporters that oil was less expensive than it had been under the Biden administration, framing energy affordability as both a national-security issue and a kitchen-table one.

For working Americans, the stakes are immediate. Fuel costs show up in commutes, grocery deliveries, farm equipment, airline tickets and nearly every product that moves by truck.

For Iran, the stakes are strategic. The regime can test whether closing the strait brings concessions, or it can recognize that Washington is prepared to keep commerce moving while demanding a lasting settlement.

There is still hard work ahead. Talks can fail, battlefield conditions can change and one attack on shipping could restore market anxiety overnight.

Yet Sunday’s news offers something more substantial than optimism. It combines record physical movement through Hormuz, an expectation of near-term talks and a clear public marker from the president: the war should end, Iran should give up its blockade strategy and oil prices should fall with the danger.

If that sequence holds, American families will feel the result every time they fill the tank.

https://100percentfedup.com/trump-oil-prices-plummet-record-flow-hormuz/