Democrats warn against pausing WHO aid: Coronavirus not time to ‘upend our relationship’

Senate Democrats are urging President Trump to reverse his decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), which has emerged as a prime target for Republicans over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Eight Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday, saying that the United States should be working with the international community, including making sure the WHO has the resources it needs. 

“The middle of a global pandemic is not the time to upend our relationship with this institution. To the contrary, your focus should be on ensuring the WHO has the authority, resources, and independence it needs to coordinate an effective global response,” the senators wrote in the letter, which was spearheaded by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.).  

In addition to Menendez, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) signed the letter.

Trump announced last week that he was pausing funding for the United Nations body amid a review of claims of mismanagement surrounding the coronavirus outbreak.

“The reality is that the WHO failed to adequately obtain, vet and share information in a timely and transparent fashion,” Trump said at a press conference Tuesday.

Trump has criticized the WHO for praising China’s supposed transparency with respect to the coronavirus, despite the president himself doing the same in late January. Pompeo defended Trump’s decision, telling Fox News that the World Health Organization needs to “do its job.”

Its job “is to make sure that the world has accurate, timely, effective, real information about what’s going on in the global health space, and they didn’t get that done here,” he added.

The Democratic senators are asking Pompeo for his plans to “forge a durable, constructive, and ongoing partnership” with the World Health Organization. 

“Just as there was confusion and shortcomings in our domestic response to the outbreak, there may be lessons to be learned from the WHO’s response to COVID-19. However, the fact remains that the WHO is the primary institution with the capacity to respond that countries across the world rely on when confronted with pandemics and other health challenges,” they added. 

Democrats have accused Trump and his allies of increasingly focusing on the World Health Organization and China to deflect from the administration’s own response the coronavirus, which has come under scrutiny amid a lack of widespread availability to tests and shortages of other medical equipment, including ventilators. 

In the letter to Pompeo, Democrats noted that the World Health Organization warned of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus on January 22, the same day Trump told CNBC that “we have it totally under control.” 

The Democratic senators added that if the United States steps back from the World Health Organization, other governments are likely to try to fill the vacuum. 

“The solution to countering Chinese influence at the WHO is American leadership and engagement, not America absenteeism,” they wrote. “It is critical that we develop a strategy to work with and strengthen the WHO’s response to the pandemic.”