State Department says US will not send ‘blank checks’ to global ‘bureaucracies’

The State Department said Saturday that the United States “rejects the outdated model of multilateralism,” saying the system makes American taxpayers “the global guarantor of a sprawling architecture of global governance.”

Additionally, he said President Donald Trump’s recent order withdrawing the United States from 66 international organizations showed that “the era of blank checks to international bureaucracies is over.”

The move marks the latest in Trump’s broader “America First” agenda to cut spending the administration deems unnecessary, ineffective or contrary to U.S. interests.

“What we call the ‘international system’ is now overrun by hundreds of opaque international organizations, many with overlapping mandates, duplicative actions, ineffective results, and poor financial and ethical governance,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a memo posted on the State Department’s Substack.

Trump orders us to withdraw from 66 ‘wasteful’ global organizations in sweeping ‘America First’ crackdown

Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds his end-of-year press conference at the State Department in Washington, DC, December 19, 2025. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)

“Even those that once served useful functions have increasingly become ineffective bureaucracies, platforms for politicized activism, or instruments contrary to our nation’s best interests. Not only do these institutions fail to produce results, they obstruct the action of those who wish to solve these problems,” Rubio added.

Rubio has not been shy about criticizing these organizations, saying continued U.S. participation “would be an abandonment of our national duty.” Additionally, the secretary stressed that this does not mean the United States is retreating from global leadership, but rather that it is rejecting what the administration views as an outdated model of multilateralism.

The United Nations headquarters building in New York, July 16, 2024. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

On Wednesday, Trump signed a presidential memorandum ordering the United States to withdraw from 66 international organizations, directing executive departments and agencies to stop participating in and funding entities that the administration believes no longer serve U.S. interests.

The memo comes just under a year after a February 4, 2025, order directing Rubio, along with the U.S. representative to the United Nations, to conduct a review of “all international intergovernmental organizations of which the United States is a member and provides any type of funding or other support, as well as all conventions and treaties to which the United States is a party, to determine which organizations, conventions and treaties are contrary to the interests of the United States,” according to the White House.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio whispers to President Donald Trump, who holds the note Rubio gave him, during a roundtable discussion on Antifa in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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The findings were presented to the president, who deliberated with his cabinet before making the withdrawals.

In the January 2026 memorandum, Trump said Rubio’s findings showed it was “contrary to the interests of the United States to remain a member of, participate in, or provide support to” the listed groups.

UN-affiliated organizations included, among others, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and the United Nations Democracy Fund. Non-UN groups included the International Solar Alliance and the Global Forum on Migration and Development, among others.

Jasmine Baehr of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.