Nashville Standard

United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), along with the entire Senate Republican Conference, in sending a letter to President Joe Biden calling for his Administration to withdraw its support for two international agreements being considered at this month’s World Health Assembly (WHA) that would grant greater authority to the dysfunctional World Health Organization (WHO) and potentially weaken United States sovereignty. The letter highlights the WHO’s abysmal COVID-19 response and argues that the President should be focusing on badly needed reforms rather than plowing ahead with international treaties and regulations that would substantially increase WHO authority, shred intellectual property rights, and infringe freedom of speech. “Some of the over 300 proposals for amendments made by member states would substantially increase the WHO’s health emergency powers and constitute intolerable infringements upon U.S. sovereignty,” the Senators wrote. The Senators noted that the failure of the WHO’s pandemic response was “as total as it was predictable and did lasting harm to our country,” and that they “are deeply concerned that your [the Biden] administration continues to support these initiatives and strongly urge you [President Biden] to change course.” “Should you ignore this advice, we state in the strongest possible terms that we consider any such agreement to be a treaty requiring the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senate under Article II Section 2 of the Constitution,” the Senators concluded. A copy of the letter can be found here.