^{U.S. President Donald Trump attends a signing ceremony for the HALT Fentanyl Act in the East Room of the White House, July 16, 2025. Credit: Joyce N. Boghosian/White House.}

The Trump administration told Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, on Tuesday that Washington is withdrawing from the U.N. agency. 

“Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States,” the U.S. State Department stated.

“UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy,” Tammy Bruce, the department spokeswoman, stated.

“UNESCO’s decision to admit the ‘State of Palestine’ as a member state is highly problematic, contrary to U.S. policy and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization,” Bruce stated. “Continued U.S. participation in international organizations will focus on advancing American interests with clarity and conviction.”

Bruce said that Washington will withdraw on Dec. 31. “The United States will remain a full member of UNESCO until that time,” Bruce stated.

Anna Kelly, deputy White House spokeswoman, told the New York Post that UNESCO “supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November.”

U.S. President Donald Trump called for a 90-day review of UNESCO in February, including probing “antisemitism or anti-Israel sentiment within the organization.”

In 2017, Trump withdrew the United States from UNESCO due to the U.N. agency’s anti-Israel bias. U.S. President Joe Biden brought the country back into UNESCO in 2023 and pledged to pay more than $600 million in past membership dues.

The United States stopped paying into UNESCO in 2011 after the U.N. agency admitted “Palestine” as a member. Washington has entered and exited the organization several times.

“We welcome the U.S. administration’s decision to withdraw from UNESCO,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar stated. “This is a necessary step, designed to promote justice and Israel’s right for fair treatment in the U.N. system, a right which has often been trampled due to politicization in this arena.”

The Paris-based U.N. agency was founded after World War II, ostensibly to promote peace through international cooperation in education, science and culture. Washington currently pays approximately 8% of the UNESCO budget. It paid closer to 20% at the beginning of Trump’s first presidency.

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, stated that Washington’s decision “is a fitting response to the consistent misguided anti-Israel bias of UNESCO, an organization that has lost its way.”

“The United States continues to demonstrate moral clarity in the international arena and when it comes to its involvement in international organizations, and makes it clear that it is unwilling to support entities that promote hatred, historical revisionism and political divisiveness over advancing shared universal values,” Danon stated.

Source: JNS