Speaker 1: A lot has happened in this first week since Donald Trump took office. We're going to focus now on just one of those things. Just days after signing an executive action withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization, President Trump now floating the idea of maybe rejoining it after all. Trump signed that executive order during his first day in office, citing the organization's quote mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and accusing it of ripping off America by quote unfairly demanding millions more in payments compared to countries like China.

Speaker 2: So I withdrew from the World Health Organization, where we paid $500 million a year and China paid $39 million a year, despite a much larger population. They offered me a $39 million. They said, we'll let you back in at $39 million. So we're going to reduce it from $500 million to $39 million. I turned them down because it became so popular, I didn't know if it would be well received even at $39 million, but maybe we would consider doing it again. I don't know. Maybe we would have to clean it up a little bit.

Speaker 1: It's unclear exactly what the president will ultimately do, but what is clear is the impact withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization would not just have on global health initiatives, but on our country's own national security. The World Health Organization was founded right after World War II by members of the United Nations to protect the world's health, warning that having separate health systems throughout the world would put all nations in danger. Joining us now, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Obama administration, Kathleen Sebelius. Thanks so much for being here. I want to talk about this op-ed that you wrote in the New York Times, where you said withdrawing from the World Health Organization would be disastrous, but you believe the president still has time to, as you said, come to his senses and reverse course, which it sounds like he may at this point. What do you think he might do?

Speaker 3: Well, Jessica, I've long ago stopped trying to predict what Donald Trump may or may not do. But here's what I know. The process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization takes a year. So we are not out of the World Health Organization. If I understand that the executive order puts WHO on notice that the United States intends to withdraw, that's step one. I am delighted to know that he may, within two days of having issued the executive order, may now be reconsidering. This isn't a discussion of how much we are or are not willing to pay and what other countries pay. It is essential to the health of Americans that we understand what's happening across the globe. We understand what's breaking out in remote countries. We have the opportunity to work with health ministers and health leaders to monitor disease, to contain, control and hopefully wipe out outbreaks before they reach our borders. We live in a global country. We cannot stop disease from coming into the states. And Jessica, we already saw what happens when the United States backs out of global health discussions. Donald Trump, in his first term, withdrew our CDC employees who worked in China, worked closely with the Chinese health minister, pulled them back, said that's really not where U.S. people should be. And by the time COVID was identified, it was already in our country. So it really put us steps back from where we could have been, should have been. And I'm really hopeful that he will rethink what lots of people consider to be the best diplomacy we have, which is health collaboration and cooperation across the globe.

Speaker 1: It is interesting because the WHO, like other organizations, like other agencies, I'm thinking about FEMA, has been now politicized in a way. And you saw at the rally people really cheering the president on. And I wonder about making that connection between how he's explaining it, which is, I think his argument is, I saved America, I'm saving America a lot of money. We're paying so much money, other countries are paying less. So there's that. And then what you're saying, and I think what a lot of people are also worried about, which is, look, this isn't about that. This is about engaging in health around the world and protecting Americans.

Speaker 3: That's absolutely right. It isn't really a tariff or a cost. The United States, since the end of World War II, has participated in discussions about health, monitoring health, training epidemiologists, containing and controlling disease outbreak, trying to share vaccines. Every country in the world is a member of WHO. Now I'm not going to tell you it is a brilliantly operating organization. Like many organizations that have existed since the end of World War II, it needs to be updated. It needs to be upgraded. We need other countries to fully participate. But withdrawing from this vital network of information monitoring would only jeopardize American citizens. We've seen it happen before. We know it's dangerous. We basically have helped eradicate polio, for instance. In most of the parts of the world, except some very remote corners of Nigeria and Pakistan, we now have outbreaks of polio potential in the United States with people being vaccine skeptics. So we may be going dramatically backwards in our public health approach, in our approach to understanding that prevention is much, much more effective and better for the Americans than trying to clear up diseases once they're here and ravaging the country. We saw what COVID does. COVID took down our economy. This disease that spread rapidly really made a huge dent in the way Americans conduct business with one another and killed millions of Americans. So this is not hypothetical. It's not something could happen, might happen. Something did happen. And the further we get away from knowing what's happening in what corners of the globe, how we can provide expertise to, as I say, contain and control, identify, help it not come to our borders, the better and more secure Americans will be.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And you mentioned like one of the things we would lose access to, the global network that sets the flu vaccines composition every year. One thing I do want to ask you more about is what you just brought up, which is that it's not a perfect organization. You're not saying it's perfect. What do you think could be done from the inside to make it a more effective organization?

Speaker 3: Well, I think, as I understand it, and I'm not in government anymore, haven't been in government since mid-2014, but I understand there is a really deep dive because we've had a recent devastating pandemic, COVID, and it gives everyone an opportunity within health and human services in the United States, but certainly within the World Health Organization, health ministries everywhere, to look at what went right and what went wrong. What kind of communication could have been better shared? How could we have better responded? What practices worked, what didn't? That's underway right now and very appropriate. They need to be updated. We can probably use artificial intelligence to share information more dramatically. We can use detection systems that aren't in place yet. Jessica, what exists now and has since 2014 under the Obama administration is what's called a global health security effort, which is a number of the WHO countries joining together and actually training one another. People are adopting countries in remote parts of the world so that we have the ability to find disease outbreaks, that we can share that information very quickly, that we have trained personnel. That effort is relatively new, but now includes, I think, 50 countries across the globe and is really effective trying to make sure that we are now not hobbled by epidemics breaking out, by pandemics that sweep the globe. Those are new, updated efforts, and again, the United States withdrawing financial support, medical expertise, collaboration with this world organization can only be harmful to Americans.

Speaker 1: All right. Kathleen Sebelius, thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it.

Speaker 3: Sure. Good to talk to you.

Speaker 1: You too.