The United States is rejecting new amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHR) public health framework, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a X post Friday.
“Nations who accept the new regulations are signing over their power in health emergencies to an unelected, international organization that could order lockdowns, travel restrictions or any other measures it sees fit,” Kennedy said in the video.
The proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations open the door to the kind of narrative management, propaganda, and censorship that we saw during the COVID pandemic. The United States can cooperate with other nations without jeopardizing our civil liberties,… pic.twitter.com/k9IWRavu9D
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) July 18, 2025
The new regulations, Kennedy stated, would supply the WHO with “unprecedented power” to potentially censor member nations and deploy medical “propaganda.”
He also claimed the agreement would usher in centralized medical surveillance systems complete with health IDs, vaccine passports and “a centralized medical database.” (RELATED: Idea Proposed By RFK Has Some In MAHA Scratching Their Heads)
“It lays the groundwork for global medical surveillance of every human being,” he said.
Kennedy added that the U.S. would be more open to signing on to the new agreement if the WHO had not proven themselves to be a body tainted by “industry influence.”
He cited the House Oversight Select Subcommittee on COVID-19’s 2025 report on the WHO, which called the organization’s COVID-19 response an “abject failure.”
Kennedy called for the U.S. to strengthen its own autonomy on health measures and to hold global organizations like the WHO in check.
“Are we going to be subject to a technocratic control system that uses health risks and pandemic preparedness as a trojan horse to curtail basic Democratic freedoms?” he asked.
He did issue a caveat that the regulations weren’t in themselves totalitarian, but called them a “step in the wrong direction.”
