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President Donald Trump on Friday said the U.S., where the coronavirus pandemic has taken the lives of 100,000 people, will sever ties with the World Health Organization.

Trump announced the move, along with a series of actions targeting China, in a news conference in the Rose Garden outside the White House. The president took no questions, with several reporters shouting out questions about protests in Minnesota sparked by the death of George Floyd, an African American man who died this week after a white police officer used his knee to pin his neck to the ground.

Trump’s decision comes a month-and-a-half after he announced the U.S. would halt funding to the WHO, which along with China, he blames for the spread of the coronavirus.

Trump has repeatedly complained that the U.S., WHO’s largest donor, gives the WHO more than $400 million annually compared to China’s roughly $40 million.

Trump said the country would redirect “those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs.”

He has called on WHO to “commit to major substantive improvements” over the next month, and argued China failed to meet its reporting obligations when the coronavirus outbreak began.

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, denounced the withdrawal.

“President Trump is putting politics before science and data with his misguided decision to terminate the U.S. relationship with the World Health Organization,” Neal said in a statement Friday evening. “This week our country reached a sad milestone when the COVID-19 death toll reached 100,000. The middle of an unprecedented global pandemic is the wrong time to cut ties with an agency that is on the front lines of the international battle to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus disease. Since 1948, the WHO has been recognized as a leader in the effort to help shape an integrated global health policy. Making a scapegoat out of the WHO at this time is irresponsible and will do nothing to end this public health crisis.”

Trump also announced new actions against China, including sanctions, for recently extending its security practices to Hong Kong, moves the president said were “absolutely smothering Hong Kong’s freedom.”

The U.S. will now review all agreements with Hong Kong and “begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment," Trump said.

“The United States wants an open and constructive relationship with China, but achieving that that relationship requires us to vigorously defend our national interest,” Trump said.