6. Department of State · Notable
Stand down enforcement of treaties not ratified by the Senate
Printed page 175 6. Department of State
“The next Administration should also direct the secretary to order an immediate stand-down on enforcement of any treaties that have not been ratified by the Senate, and order a thorough review of the degree to which such enforcement has impacted the department’s functions, policies, and use of resources.”
What has happened
- Partially done
Executive Order 14199 ordered a review of all conventions and treaties to which the United States is a party. It is not the review the Quote asks for — its criterion is whether an instrument is contrary to United States interests, not whether enforcing an unratified instrument has burdened the Department's functions, policies and resources — but it is the only Department-wide treaty review in the window, and it produced the January 2026 withdrawal memorandum.
- Executive Order 14199, Withdrawing the United States From and Ending Funding to Certain United Nations Organizations and Reviewing United States Support to All International Organizations (review of all conventions and treaties to which the United States is a party)
- Presidential Memorandum of January 7, 2026, Withdrawing the United States From International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties That Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States
- Partially done
Two named unratified instruments were stood down on day one, but no general order was issued and no review of the cost of enforcing unratified treaties was ordered. Executive Order 14162, section 3(a), declared the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement — an executive agreement never submitted to the Senate — “effective immediately upon this provision of notification”, and section 3(b)-(c) extended that to any commitment made under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and to the money behind it. The same day, Executive Order 14155 section 4 declared that actions to effectuate the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the IHR amendments “will have no binding force on the United States”.
- Executive Order 14162, Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements, section 3(a): the United States will consider its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and any attendant obligations to be effective immediately upon notification
- Executive Order 14155, Withdrawing the United States From the World Health Organization, section 4: the Secretary of State will cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Treaty negative search, run against the record Congress keeps of treaties: congress.gov’s treaty data, sorted by most recent update, holds 785 treaty records, and not one has been updated since 2025-01-15. The only Treaty Document of the 119th Congress is 119-1 (Mutual Legal Assistance), transmitted 2025-01-14 by the previous administration. So inside the window no treaty was transmitted, re-transmitted, withdrawn from the Senate, returned to the President, or acted on. A search for “treaty”, “treaties” and “international agreement” across the Federal Register, White House presidential actions, public laws and bills in Congress returns only the January 2026 withdrawal memorandum, Delegation of Authority No. 620, and unrelated fisheries and tax matters.
- Boundary: partial on two named instruments plus an adjacent review, against an ask for an immediate blanket stand-down. Assessed the same way as #471.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- Enforcement of unratified treaties
- ID
- 472