(1) On May 18, 2020, President Donald Trump 
sent a letter to World Health Organization (referred 
to in this Act as ‘‘WHO’’) Director-General Tedros 
Adhanom Ghebreyesus (referred to in this Act as the 
‘‘Director-General’’), announcing that— 
(A) United States contributions to WHO 
would be halted due its mismanagement of the 
COVID–19 outbreak and its lack of independ-
ence from the People’s Republic of China; and 
(B) the United States would withdraw 
from WHO if it did not commit to substantive 
improvements within 30 days. 
(2) President Trump’s May 18 letter cited nu-
merous instances of WHO mismanagement of the 
COVID–19 pandemic, including— 
(A) unjustified delays informing member 
states about a potentially serious disease out-
break in Wuhan, China; and 
(B) repeated grossly inaccurate or mis-
leading claims about the transmissibility of the 
virus and about the Government of China’s 
handling of the outbreak. 
(3) On June 30, 2020, Secretary of State Mike 
Pompeo formally notified the United Nations of the 
United States decision to withdraw from WHO, 
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which would have taken effect on July 6, 2021, 
under the terms of a joint resolution adopted by 
Congress on June 14, 1948 (Public Law 80–643; 62 
Stat. 441). 
(4) A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 
April and May 2020 indicated that 51 percent of 
Americans felt that WHO had done a poor or fair 
job in managing the COVID–19 pandemic. 
(5) On January 20, 2021, President Joseph 
Biden sent United Nations Director-General Anto´nio 
Guterres a letter retracting the United States notice 
of withdrawal from WHO. 
(6) On December 1, 2021, at the second special 
session of the World Health Assembly (referred to in 
this Act as the ‘‘WHA’’) decided— 
(A) to establish an intergovernmental ne-
gotiating body (referred to in this section as the 
‘‘INB’’) to draft and negotiate a WHO conven-
tion (referred to in this section as the ‘‘Conven-
tion’’), agreement, or other international instru-
ment on pandemic prevention, preparedness, 
and response, with a view to adoption under Ar-
ticle 19 or any other provision of the WHO 
Constitution; and 
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(B) that the INB shall submit a progress 
report to the Seventy-sixth WHA and a working 
draft of the convention for consideration by the 
Seventy-seventh WHA. 
(7) On February 24, March 14 and 15, and 
June 6 through 8 and 15 through 17, 2022, the 
INB held its inaugural meeting at which the Direc-
tor-General proposed the following 5 themes to guide 
the INB’s work in drafting the Convention: 
(A) Building national, regional, and global 
capacities based on a whole-of-government and 
whole-of-society approach. 
(B) Establishing global access and benefit 
sharing for all pathogens, and determining a 
global policy for the equitable production and 
distribution of countermeasures. 
(C) Establishing robust systems and tools 
for pandemic preparedness and response. 
(D) Establishing a long-term plan for sus-
tainable financing to ensure support for global 
health threat management and response sys-
tems. 
(E) Empowering WHO to fulfill its man-
date as the directing and coordinating authority 
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on international health work, including for pan-
demic preparedness and response. 
(8) The INB failed to negotiate an agreement 
on Convention text and did not present a final draft 
of the Convention during the Seventy-seventh World 
Health Assembly held between May 27 and June 1, 
2024. 
(9) On June 1, 2024, the World Health Assem-
bly extended the INB’s Convention mandate until 
the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly in 2025. 
(10) On January 20, 2025, President Donald 
Trump revoked President Joseph Biden’s January 
25, 2021, retraction of the United States notifica-
tion of withdrawal from the WHO. 
(11) On May 20, 2025, during the 78th World 
Health Assembly, WHO member states adopted the 
INB’s draft of a WHO Pandemic Agreement. 
(12) Section 723.3 of title 11 of the Depart-
ment of State’s Foreign Affairs Manual states that 
when ‘‘determining whether any international agree-
ment should be brought into force as a treaty or as 
an international agreement other than a treaty, the 
utmost care is to be exercised to avoid any invasion 
or compromise of the constitutional powers of the 
President, the Senate, and the Congress as a whole’’ 
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and includes the following criteria to be considered 
when determining whether an international agree-
ment should take the form of a treaty or an execu-
tive agreement: 
(A) ‘‘The extent to which the agreement 
involves commitments or risks affecting the na-
tion as a whole’’. 
(B) ‘‘Whether the agreement is intended to 
affect state laws’’. 
(C) ‘‘Whether the agreement can be given 
effect without the enactment of subsequent leg-
islation by the Congress’’. 
(D) ‘‘Past U.S. practice as to similar 
agreements’’. 
(E) ‘‘The preference of the Congress as to 
a particular type of agreement’’. 
(F) ‘‘The degree of formality desired for 
an agreement’’. 
(G) ‘‘The proposed duration of the agree-
ment, the need for prompt conclusion of an 
agreement, and the desirability of concluding a 
routine or short-term agreement’’. 
(H) ‘‘The general international practice as 
to similar agreements’’. 
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SEC. 3. SENSE OF CONGRESS. 
It is the sense of Congress that— 
(1) a significant segment of the American pub-
lic is deeply skeptical of the World Health Organiza-
tion, its leadership, and its independence from the 
pernicious political influence of certain member 
states, including the People’s Republic of China; 
(2) Congress strongly prefers that any agree-
ment related to pandemic prevention, preparedness, 
and response adopted by the World Health Assembly 
pursuant to the work of the INB be considered a 
treaty requiring the advice and consent of the Sen-
ate, with two-thirds of Senators concurring; 
(3) the scope of the agreement which the INB 
has been tasked with drafting, as outlined by the Di-
rector-General, is so broad that any application of 
the factors referred to in section 2(11) will weigh 
strongly in favor of it being considered a treaty; and 
(4) given the level of public distrust, any rel-
evant new agreement by the World Health Assembly 
which cannot garner the two-thirds vote needed for 
Senate approval should not be agreed to or imple-
mented by the United States. 
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