Trump Transforms the UN’s Failures Into American Savings

As the 81st session of the United Nations Assembly concludes, President Donald Trump has departed after keeping the pressure on the U.N. to reform.

Trump lambasted the U.N. for “criticizing the United States for protecting our children from transgender mutilization and transgender insanity.” The president observed that U.N. agencies seem to have “little to say about the persecution of Christians” while they routinely heap scorn on Israel. Additionally, he said that they want “America to open our borders to gangs and criminals from the world’s most dangerous places.”

Since the president returned to the Oval Office, he has put the U.N. on notice: End your nonsense or face deep U.S. funding cuts. It hasn’t, and cuts have followed.

To date, his administration says it has saved the American people over $1 billion by making cuts to the bloated U.N. bureaucracy with a 15% cut in its regular budget ($570 million) and another 12% cut to its endless peacekeeping operations ($549 million). This reportedly includes cuts to 4,000 jobs.

Over the years, international organizations in general have expanded their remits. The U.N. in particular has forgotten its original mission, which its charter identifies as consisting of preserving peace and security, encouraging nations to cooperate to solve problems, and protecting human rights and freedoms.

Not only has this drifting unsustainably inflated budgets, but these noncore initiatives have given international progressives well-financed global platforms to push their radical abortion, gender, equity, climate, antisemitic, and anti-American agendas.

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The U.N.’s secretary-general’s own reform task force has criticized the U.N. system’s growth—a system that in 2024 conducted 27,000 meetings involving 240 bodies and produced 1,100 reports, a 20% increase since 1990, according to Reuters. The secretary-general admitted that “many of these reports are not widely read.”

Earlier this year, Trump withdrew the United States from a slew of international organizations, including 31 U.N. entities, that worked contrary to American interests and values.

This month, the U.S. Department of State paid the U.N. $800 million to cover its 2025 membership dues and finance the cost of peacekeeping operations in Haiti—to prevent illegal migration to America—and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the deadly Ebola virus outbreak in zones of conflict must remain contained. Earlier, the department disbursed nearly $4 billion to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and $300 million to the U.N.’s Children’s Fund.

The U.N. says that the United States still owes it over $4 billion in unpaid obligations. But has the United Nations made the reforms demanded by President Trump? Has it ceased to engage in radical activities that promote abortion, gender ideology, job-killing climate agendas, anti-Americanism, and antisemitism? Frankly, no.

The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UNICEF have been at the forefront of advancing the global Left’s radical agenda. They are thumbing their noses at U.S. taxpayers by publicly rejecting Trump’s executive orders prohibiting U.S. foreign aid from supporting radicalism. Each organization has been aggressively accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, transmitting reports containing claims from Hamas terrorists.

Recently, the U.N. Human Rights Office, of which the U.S. is not a member, claimed that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the United States committed war crimes” against Iran. The basis for the accusation is UNICEF reports secured from Iranian authorities.

Another example of continued U.N. disrespect for its largest donor is its audacious interference in our domestic political process.

The head of the U.N. refugee agency, Barham Salih, rejected the Trump administration’s candidate for the deputy high commissioner in favor of a left-wing career diplomat. In 2025, the U.S. contributed over $800 million to the agency, financing one-quarter of its budget. Salih—a former Iraqi deputy prime minister and recipient of $33 million of U.S. taxpayer money for the university he founded—is a socialist (I was his former U.S. Embassy Baghdad advisor).

Trump has repeatedly called on U.N. agencies to get back to their core mission of promoting peace and international cooperation. He has also called on these agencies to end their radical practices, but they refuse to do so.

American taxpayers have no obligation to fund the salaries and activities of foreign radicals. Until the reforms that Trump has laid out are made, the administration ought not to cut any further checks to these U.N. agencies.