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Trump has just ripped the United States out of 66 international organizations — the most sweeping dismantling of global cooperation in generations. In a breathtakingly bold rewrite of U.S. foreign policy, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum January 7 directing every agency in the federal government to begin the process of withdrawing the United States from 66 international bodies, including 31 tied to the United Nations and 35 non-UN organizations. The White House claims these institutions are “contrary to the interests of the United States” — a catch-all phrase that now apparently covers everything from climate action and gender equity to migration and human rights cooperation. This isn’t some bureaucratic pruning. Within that list sits the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — the foundational treaty underpinning all major global climate agreements since 1992 and the architecture that gave us the Paris Agreement — which the U.S. now becomes the only country in the world to leave. It also includes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the planet’s most authoritative scientific body on climate science, and UN Women, a key force for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking for the administration, made the ideological stakes explicit: Washington will no longer spend money, legitimacy, or diplomatic capital on institutions that it believes conflict with U.S. “sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” branding these global bodies as “wasteful” and “contrary to national interests.” Critics across the political and scientific spectrum are already calling this what it is — a catastrophic abdication of global leadership. Former Biden climate adviser Gina McCarthy called the climate withdrawal “shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish.” Analysts point out that pulling out of the UNFCCC sidelines the U.S. entirely from global climate decision-making, ceding influence to rivals like China at precisely the moment the world needs leadership. This isn’t just about losing influence; it’s about inviting disaster. It means the U.S. abandons platforms where life-saving collaboration happens — from pandemic preparedness to climate adaptation financing, from migration coordination to human rights monitoring. As The Washington Post’s reporting on the policy shift made clear, the administration has already used similar logic to reject cooperation with the WHO and UNESCO before. For those of us who believe in a world where cooperation actually matters, this signals something far more profound than transactional diplomacy. It is a declaration that global problems — rising seas, forced displacement, extractive economies, gender-based violence — are now someone else’s problem. Trump isn’t reforming global governance; he’s dismantling it. And make no mistake: the costs will be real. A fractured world means less ability to shape outcomes, fewer allies when crises hit home, and more power for authoritarian actors. Please stop this, the president should not be allowed to do this.