President Donald Trump has signed a number of executive orders. The orders include withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change.
The US will leave the United Nations health agency in 12 months and will stop all financial support for its work, reports the DW.
Trump criticized the WHO for failing to act independently from the "inappropriate political influence of WHO member states" and for requiring "unfairly onerous payments" from the US compared to countries like China.
"World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It's not going to happen anymore," Trump said as he signed the order during his first day back in the White House.
The US is the WHO's biggest financial backer, contributing around 18% of its funding.
Trump started the process of quitting the WHO in his first presidential term, but President Joe Biden was able to stop the process when he took office in January 2021.
The decision of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement marks a defiant rejection of global efforts to combat climate change as catastrophic weather events intensify worldwide.
According to the agreement's rules, exiting would take about a year after submitting formal notice to the United Nations.
Trump also signed the notice to the UN, informing the world body of the US withdrawal.
In his earlier remarks, Trump said the US, the world's top oil and gas producer, will expand drilling.
"Now we are going to drill baby drill," he said.
Among the numerous executive orders and actions Donald Trump signed during his inauguration was one that aimed to end the "weaponization of government."
He has often charged that the US justice system has been used against him.
He also reversed all the executive orders of the Biden administration.
Trump also signed executive orders freezing federal hiring and ordering all workers back to the office after many have been working from home in recent years.
Executive orders enable presidents to create policy outside the typical lawmaking process. However, they are often the result of extensive negotiations among various agencies.
If a president issues an executive order without legal authority, the courts can overturn it.
Moreover, President Trump signed an order to delay implementing the law banning TikTok in the United States for 75 days.
When asked what the TikTok order meant, Trump said, it "just gave me the right to sell it or close it."
TikTok's China-based owner ByteDance missed a deadline on Saturday to sell its US subsidiary to non-Chinese buyers or be banned in the country.
The video-sharing platform took itself offline for US users for several hours over the weekend before returning when Trump vowed executive action.
The US president signaled his frustration with the reasoning behind the possible TikTok ban, saying China made a lot of other things that are sold in the US, including phones.
But he said it was in China's interest to approve a deal to sell the company.
Earlier, TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump's inauguration, sitting behind the president as one of his guests.
