WASHINGTON — World Health Organization bureaucrats have finally returned an American flag that flew at its Geneva headquarters after State Department officials accused the public health body of holding the Stars and Stripes “captive.”

Trump administration officials had demanded the return of the flag after the US announced plans to pull out of the organization, but the WHO had only agreed to remove the standard from public view before handing it over Friday, according to the State Department.

The WHO’s executive board is still debating whether the US has approval to withdraw.

“The WHO has failed the United States time and time again: pursuing political agendas driven by our competitors on the world stage, pushing for health restrictions that decimated small businesses, and concealing key data that could have saved the lives of American citizens,” said State Department Deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott.

“Now the bloated, ineffective, organization has delivered one final insult to the American people and has refused to return the US flag which flew at the WHO before our withdrawal — all despite the United States serving as the founding member of the organization and its largest financial backer,” he had added earlier Friday.

“The WHO’s refusal to hand over the American Flag is entirely unacceptable,” Pigott had also said. “This is the epitome of globalist disrespect for national sovereignty — a globalist institution holding the American Flag captive.”

Both the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services had overseen taxpayer funding of the WHO, which has claimed it is still owed more than $130 million despite the US withdrawal.

“All US funding and staffing at the WHO has ended,” Pigott insisted. “The United States will offer no support to international bureaucracies that denigrate the American people or work against our national interests.”

Trump signed a Day One executive order upon taking office on Jan. 20, 2025, setting in motion the exit from the WHO, citing its politicized response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Administration officials have said the cost of “draconian” pandemic restrictions cost $16 trillion and 1.2 million American lives.

The international public health agency had also mistakenly told people not to wear masks and claimed COVID-19 was not airborne during the early stages of the pandemic.

The WHO’s most recent budget topped $6.8 billion, of which American taxpayers previously forked over between $400 million and $500 million every year, Trump has said, noting that China contributes around $40 million.

The US share of member dues also total around $111 million annually, according to HHS.

“Like many international organizations, the WHO abandoned its core mission and acted repeatedly against the interests of the United States,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a joint statement Thursday.

“Although the United States was a founding member and the WHO’s largest financial contributor, the organization pursued a politicized, bureaucratic agenda driven by nations hostile to American interests,” they continued.

“Going forward, US engagement with the WHO will be limited strictly to effectuate our withdrawal and to safeguard the health and safety of the American people.”

As the United Nations’ specialized health agency, the WHO coordinates countries’ responses to global health threats like outbreaks of monkeypox, Ebola, and polio.

No US citizen has ever served as one of WHO’s chief executives — despite Americans having helped found the organization in 1948.

Critics such as Dr. Ronald Nahass, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told the Associated Press that the US withdrawal was “shortsighted and misguided” as well as “scientifically reckless.”