Utah Sen. Mike Lee wants to defund the United Nations
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Sen. Mike Lee introduced a bill Wednesday that would see the United States stop payments to and give up membership in the United Nations.
“No more blank checks for the United Nations. Americans’ hard-earned dollars have been funneled into initiatives that fly in the face of our values — enabling tyrants, betraying allies, and spreading bigotry,” said the Utah senator in a press release.
The Disengaging Entirely from the United Nations Debacle Act, or the DEFUND Act, would repeal federal laws — like the U.N. Participation Act of 1945 and the United Nations Headquarters Agreement Act — that tie the U.S. to the U.N.
Not only would it stop financial support from flowing into the global organization, but it would also prohibit the U.S. from getting involved in the U.N.’s peacemaking operations and formalize a withdrawal from U.N. conventions like the World Health Organization.
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“With the DEFUND Act, we’re stepping away from this debacle. If we engage with the UN in the future, it will be on our terms, with the full backing of the Senate and an iron-clad escape clause,” Lee said.
Sen. Lee: ‘UN has become a tool of antisemitism’
His proposed legislation follows the global organization’s refusal to condemn Hamas for the attack on Israel. Instead, several U.N. agencies have increasingly called for a humanitarian cease-fire, which earned criticism and pushback from Israel.
Israel’s foreign minister Eli Cohen has said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is unfit to lead the U.N. since he refuses to hold Hamas accountable. Initially, Guterres said the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 didn’t happen “in a vacuum” since Palestine has been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” More recently, Cohen said he decided to revoke U.N. Humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings’ residence visa to travel to Israel for not condemning Hamas.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Tuesday, Lee wrote, “The UN has become a tool of antisemitism.” He called it “an enemy of Judeo-Christian beliefs,” adding that the U.S. perpetuates the international peacekeeping organization’s “anti-American agenda” by giving it nearly $20 billion a year.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, alongside Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala, is introducing companion legislation in the House. “This year, the United Nations’ corruption, and its despicable, brazen political agenda have been on full display,” the Texas representative said.
“From (U.N. Relief and Work Agency) actively protecting Hamas and acting against our ally Israel, delayed condemning Hamas, to China being elected to the ‘Human Rights Council,’ to the propagation of climate hysteria, covering for China’s forced abortion and sterilization programs,” he said, “the UN’s decades-old, internal rot once again raises the questions of why the United States is even still a member or why we’re wasting billions.”
Other GOP lawmakers and officials push to defund U.N.
Other Republicans, like Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, have also expressed interest in defunding the U.N. She introduced the Stand with Israel Act, which, Luna said, would first cut funding from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
She wrote in a Newsweek op-ed that the council was concerned about what was happening in Israel while appointing Iran to chair the Human Rights Council Social Forum “just a few weeks after Iranian ‘morality police’ reportedly beat to death a 16-year-old girl for not wearing a hijab.”
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has also vowed to defund the international organization “as much as possible” if elected. But she fell short of saying she supported the U.S. leaving the U.N.
“The only thing is we would defund the U.N. as much as possible,” the former U.N. ambassador told Fox News host Sean Hannity last month. “The only reason, Sean, you don’t get out of the U.N. is we’re one country of five that has a veto.”
“The number of things we were able to stop China, Russia and Iran from doing with that veto matters, and so you keep bad things from happening,” she said.
“But,” Haley added, “we don’t have to pay at the level that we’re paying, and we don’t have to be in any of those other organizations.”
