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New Delhi: US President Donald Trump Friday announced the termination of the North American giants relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO), making it the latest addition to a long list of institutions and pacts the US has withdrawn from under his administration.

Ever since he came to power, the US has either permanently withdrawn from or substantially cut the funding of several United Nations agencies and multilateral pacts pertaining to trade and environment. His administration has used different means to handicap other global institutions too for instance, the US blocked the appointment of judges to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), rendering the trade regulator as largely meaningless.

Many of these were initiated or created by the US in the post-war era.

ThePrint lists the institutions, pacts and other global and bilateral arrangements the US has withdrawn from or weakened under Trumps leadership.

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Soon after getting into office in November 2016, President Donald Trump decided to pull out the US from theTrans-Pacific Partnership, which was a plurilateral preferential trade agreement involving 12 Pacific Rim countries such as Canada, Japan, Australia and ASEAN nations. He called it a bad, bad deal for America. If the US had continued to remain a part of the TPP, the signatories would have represented roughly 40 per cent of the global GDP.

In June 2017, the US pulled out of the 2015 Paris Climate Deal, which was originally signed by 196 countries, for not being fair. The agreements long-term goal was to keep the rise of global temperature below the 2 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels and ideally keep its below 1.5 degrees. The move was opposed by climate activists in the US and across the world.

In October 2017, the US announced its decision to withdraw from the UNs educational, scientific and cultural organisation. It quit UNESCO along with Israel and attacked the agency for its anti-Israel bias. The U.S. has demanded fundamental reform in the agency that is best known for its World Heritage program to protect cultural sites and traditions, noted a PBS report.

Also read:UK wants 5G alliance of 10 countries, including India, to avoid reliance on Chinese Huawei

In December 2017, the US decided to leave the negotiations on the proposed UN deal for a Global Compact for Migration, an international agreement on managing safe, orderly, and regular migration around the globe.

In May 2018, the Trump administration decided to renege from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, for being too favourable to the Hassan Rouhani regime. The deal was signed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and Germany and Iran. As a part of the deal, Iran had agreed to not develop nuclear weapons. Since the US move, Iran has agreed to a phased withdrawal from agreement restarting stockpiling and increasing uranium enrichment.

In June 2018, the US withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council stating that the agency had an anti-Israel bias. The body was set up in 2006 and works towards the promotion and protection of human rights across the world.

The Donald Trump administration announced its decision to end decades of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in August 2018 for the agencys alleged anti-Israel bias. While the UNRWA is meant to help refugees across the world, a substantial part of its work was directing towards aiding Palestinian refugees.

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Trump has also facilitated US withdrawal from several US-Russia arms control treaties such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, with the latest being Open Skies Treaty. Currently, New START is the only remaining major arms control treaty between the US and Russia. Unless renewed, this treaty is set to collapse next February, and would mean the end of mutual arms cooperation between the two powers.

While the US President has repeatedly attacked the WTO and threatened to quit the organisation, he has refrained from doing so until now. According to him, the WTO, which has the primary task of dispute resolution between member countries, hasnt been fair to the US in its rulings. However, the Trump administration has crippled the global trade regulator by blocking the appointment of judges to WTO. Currently, the WTO has only a single judge left.

Donald Trump has also weakened the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation by denying to publicly announce US adherence to Article 5 of the NATO Charter. This article pertains to the idea of collective defence commitment the underlying idea of the military alliance. By choosing not to support it, Trump has undermined the very credibility of the alliance.

Also read:Trump unleashing fury at Twitter on Twitter is only helping its business

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Paris deal to WHO, the 11 organisations Donald Trumps US has pulled out of, weakened - ThePrint

"There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!"

That follows hard on a Memorial Day weekend spent attacking plans by states to increase their vote-by-mail efforts as a way to help mitigate a possible second surge of the coronavirus in the fall.

Now, before we go any further, it's worth noting here that the sort of widespread election fraud that Trump is talking about is incredibly rare. In fact, there's just no significant evidence of intentional voter fraud on anything near the scale Trump and his allies allege. Never has been.

Study after study that make this fact plain.

How many examples did he find? Exactly 31 -- out of more than 1 billion instances. 31! (That's an infinitesimally small number.) That's not to say that each of those 31 instances of attempted voter fraud isn't worth an investigation. We don't want any voter fraud. But it is to say that 31 instances out of more than 1 billion is nothing anywhere close to widespread voter fraud.

So then, why is Trump so fixated on a problem that doesn't exist? The key lies in a single word he keeps using when talking about mail-in balloting: "Rigged."

Notice the pattern? This is a man who cannot accept losing in any way, shape or form. And when faced with defeat or setback, he insists that the rules were broken, that something nefarious happened -- although he never says exactly what.

Which brings us back to Trump's attacks on mail-in balloting in the November election. What he's doing is simple: Laying the groundwork to never admit defeat if he winds up losing to former Vice President Joe Biden in the fall.

If Trump does lose, he will insist that it was not the result of voters choosing Biden over him but rather a function of those cheating Democrats and their "rigged" mail-in ballot scheme -- because Donald Trump doesn't lose. And the only way he could lose is if he was cheated in some way.

All because Trump isn't capable of admitting he might not always be the best at everything always.

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Here's the *real* reason Donald Trump is attacking mail-in ballots - CNN

Jason Merritt/TERMGetty Images

Taylor Swift is ready to name names. The once notoriously politically-silent singer tweeted directly at Donald Trump this afternoon, following the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer who was filmed pinning him to the ground in Minneapolis. Protests in the city started in response to the officer not being arrested, and they had become violent.

Trump further fueled controversy by encouraging officers to shoot protesters should they loot ("these THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I wont let that happen," Trump wrote. "Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!") Twitter even censored Trump's tweet for "glorifying violence," the social media platform's starkest action ever taken against Trump.

Swift tagged Trump in her tweet, writing, "After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? When the looting starts the shooting starts??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump."

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Swift has spoken about her disapproval of the Trump administration before in interviews and discussions with fans, but she has never tweeted to the President, directly criticizing him.

In an August interview with The Guardian, Swift described the political atmosphere Trump created as gaslighting the American public into being like, If you hate the president, you hate America.

She added, Were a democracyat least, were supposed to bewhere youre allowed to disagree, dissent, debate. I really think that he [Trump] thinks this is an autocracy.

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Taylor Swift Calls Donald Trump Out Directly for Stoking the Fires of White Supremacy and Racism' - ELLE.com

US President Donald Trump on Friday said that America is terminating its relationship with the World Health Organization as he blamed it and China for the deaths and destruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe.

Stating that the funding of the WHO would now be diverted to other global public health organisations, Trump announced a series of decisions against China including issuing proclamation to deny entry to certain Chinese nationals and tightening of regulations against Chinese investments in America.

Trump also announced that the US will end special treatment of Hong Kong in response to Chinese imposition of new controls. He said that the US will revise its travel advisory to warn of surveillance in Hong Kong.

"The world needs answers from China," Trump said in his aggressive speech on a bright sunny day from the Rose Garden of the White House. The president, however, did not take any questions. For decades it has ripped off the US like no one has ever done before, he said, reiterating his charges against China.

China not only stole intellectual property, took away billions of dollars from the US and offshored the jobs, but also violated its commitment under the World Trade Organization, he said, adding that it was able to get away with the theft, like no one before because of past politicians and past presidents.

China, he alleged, has unlawfully claimed territories in the Indo-Pacific ocean, threatening freedom of navigation and international trade and broke its word to the world on ensuring the autonomy of Hong Kong.

"The United States wants an open and constructive relationship with China, but achieving this relationship requires us to vigorously defend our national interest," he said.

Trump alleged that the Chinese government has continually violated its promises to the US and many other nations. "These plain facts cannot be overlooked or swept aside," he said.

Observing that the world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government, Trump reiterated that China's cover-up of the Wuhan virus allowed the disease to spread all over the world, instigating a global pandemic that has cost more than 100,000 American lives and over one million lives worldwide.

"Chinese officials ignored their reporting obligations to the World Health Organization and pressured the World Health Organization to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered by Chinese authorities. Countless lives have been taken, and profound economic hardship has been inflicted all around the globe," he said.

China, he said, has total control over the WHO despite only paying USD 40 million per year compared to what the US has been paying which is approximately USD 450 million a year.

"We have detailed the reforms that it must make and engage with them directly, but they have refused to act.

"Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs," Trump said. The world needs answers from China on the virus, he said.

"We must have transparency. Why is it that China shut off infected people from Wuhan to all other parts of China? It went nowhere else; it didn't go to Beijing, it went nowhere else, but they allowed them to freely travel throughout the world, including Europe and the United States. The death and destruction caused by this is incalculable," he said.

"We must have answers not only for us but for the rest of the world. This pandemic has underscored the crucial importance of building up America's economic independence, reshoring our critical supply chains, and protecting America's scientific and technological advances. For years, the government of China has conducted illicit espionage to steal our industrial secrets of which there are many," Trump said.

Trump said that later in the day, he will issue a proclamation to better secure America's vital university research and "to suspend the entry of certain foreign nationals from China who have been identified as potential security risks".

Asserting that he is also taking action to protect the integrity of America's financial system, Trump said he is instructing his presidential working group on financial markets to study the differing practices of Chinese companies listed on the US financial markets with a goal of protecting American investors.

"Investment firms should not be subjecting their clients to the hidden and undue risks associated with financing Chinese companies that do not play by the same rules. Americans are entitled to fairness and transparency," he said.

Referring to the unilateral Chinese action control over Hong Kong security, Trump said that this was a plain violation of Beijing's treaty obligations with the UK in the declaration of 1984 and explicit provisions of Hong Kong's basic law which has 27 years to go.

"China's latest incursion, along with other recent developments that degraded the territory's freedoms, makes clear that Hong Kong is no longer sufficiently autonomous to warrant the special treatment that we have afforded the territory since the handover," he said.

"China has replaced its promised formula of one country, two systems with one country, one system; therefore, I am directing my administration to begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment," Trump added.

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Donald Trump says US terminating relationship with WHO; takes steps against China - Economic Times

"He is planting the seeds for delegitimizing the election if he loses," Vanita Gupta, a former head of the Department of Justices civil rights division under President Barack Obama and now president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said on Twitter on Sunday in reaction to Trump's "rigged election" claim. "Its from the playbook. Itll get more intense as he gets more freaked out."

Trumps rhetoric isnt new for him. Dating back even before his entry into electoral politics, the president has had a long preoccupation with voter fraud and rigged elections. As a primary candidate, he attributed his Iowa defeat to fraud committed by Sen. Ted Cruz. Even after his general election victory, Trump made unsubstantiated claims of serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California three states he failed to carry and told congressional leaders that millions of illegal votes were the reason he lost the popular vote.

In one of his first acts as president, Trump created an 11-member commission to study alleged voter fraud. Two years later, amid the GOPs 2018 wipeout, he was lodging complaints about electoral corruption in Arizona and missing or forged ballots in Florida.

"Itll get more intense as he gets more freaked out."

Vanita Gupta, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

The concern that Trump might attempt to ignore the outcome of the election has persisted as an undercurrent in the Democratic Party since 2016, when Trump, during the years last presidential debate, refused to say if he would accept the elections outcome if he lost. In the years since, Democrats saw innuendo in Trumps jokes about extending his presidency beyond the constitutional limit of eight years and expressed admiration for Chinese President Xi Jinpings limitless terms.

Its one of those things that I think has a very low probability, but a very high risk, said David Skaggs, a former Democratic congressman who has discussed the potential for disruption in the November election with other lawmakers and former lawmakers in recent days. So even though I dont think its likely to eventuate into some kind of intervention at the state level by the president theres still some chance of that, and therefore its wise to take it seriously.

Skaggs said there are people remaining in government who take their oaths of office seriously and who are not going to be bowled over by a power grab. However, he noted the presence of a militia movement out there in the country that would probably rise to arms if the president said they should, and that would be awful.

I think the more there is reporting that takes the presidents innuendo seriously about this the integrity, or the dis-integrity of the election the more people will be on alert, he said. And that is some prophylactic, better than hydroxychloroquine.

While the unique and uncertain atmospheric conditions this year an election season rattled by the coronavirus crisis, which has postponed primaries and raised questions about voting procedures on Election Day in November have served to put critics of the president on edge, its his recent threats to withhold funding from Michigan and Nevada that have raised alarms.

Especially significant is Michigan, which Trump won in 2016 but where he is polling behind Biden.

Hes already set the stage to say its rigged, said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns. This is part of the Trump autocrat playbook. Theres no way this guys going to win the popular vote, and its at least 50-50 hes going to lose the Electoral College. So, hes got to come up with something else.

The Biden campaign is signaling an awareness of the questions it raises. The former vice president told donors at a virtual fundraiser late last month that he is beginning a transition process, saying the Bush administration worked very closely with Barack [Obama] and me, with our administration, in terms of handing over power in the transition, according to a pool report.

I hope it's as smooth as it was then, he said, adding, I doubt it, but I hope so.

Bob Bauer, Bidens personal lawyer, said in a prepared statement that Trump may well resort to any kind of trick, ploy or scheme he can in order to hold on to his presidency.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump's reelection effort, called any discussion about the presidents unwillingness to leave office if defeated baseless, ridiculous conspiracy talk and they should go see [Democrats] Hillary Clinton or Stacey Abrams because they actually have openly questioned their own election results.

The Trump administration recently started the process of planning for a transition of power if Biden wins, creating a transition planning group to prepare for the possibility.

But Trump has rarely been encumbered by fidelity to tradition. And Trumps former lawyer Michael Cohen once predicted in congressional testimony that there will never be a peaceful transition of power if Trump loses.

Would I be surprised if he gets beat in November and makes noises about not going out the door? No, and then what kind of constitutional crisis would that create, and then what would you do? said Mark Longabaugh, a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders during his 2016 campaign.

He likened the prospect facing Democrats to that of the 2000 presidential election, in which the Supreme Court prohibited further recounts of the Florida vote, awarding the presidency to George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

If its narrow, thats when Trump can really create a constitutional crisis, Longabaugh said. Think about the 2000 election, and if that was the election, what would Trump do? And you know, what would Trump do if the Supreme Court went against him? Would he do what Al Gore did and put the interests of the country above his own interests whether or not the Supreme Court was correct in its behavior or not? Thats where you get into, I think, scary territory.

At a minimum, Democratic doubts about Trump's willingness to accept the November results have increased the imperative to win by indisputable margins a heavy lift in an election that is widely expected to be close.

"My job is to make sure he loses Wisconsin so badly that he doesnt have an argument for sticking around that passes the smell test, said Ben Wikler, chairman of the state Democratic Party in Wisconsin, a state that is critical to Trumps path to reelection.

Noting that Trump has "filed a lot of lawsuits" in the past, he said, The bigger the margin, the safer democracy becomes.

But outside of a court challenge, Trumps options to disregard the elections outcome are extremely limited.

Theres a lot of people that need to do something to hold and implement the results of an election, said David A. Super, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center who has analyzed scenarios in which Trump could attempt to hold on to power. None of them is named Donald J. Trump. Theres absolutely no authority for canceling or overriding an election in the Constitution or in the statutes. And it would require the president to get multiple people to fairly blatantly disregard their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

The concerns about Trumps intentions are reminiscent to some Democrats of the anxiety they felt in the 1970s, when the net was closing around Richard Nixon and some feared he may not go easily.

The difference, said Les Francis, a former deputy White House chief of staff in the Carter administration, is that Nixon made an institutional decision to resign, while one thing we know about Trump, for sure, is hes not an institutionalist by any stretch of the imagination.

I dont think theres any depth to which he will not go, Francis said. I dont think there are any rules that he thinks apply to him. As his behavior grows worse, I think people become more alarmed at the possibilities.

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Trump sees a rigged election ahead. Democrats see a constitutional crisis in the making. - POLITICO