A New Year and a Renewed Focus on Foreign Influence Laws

Traditionally, the primary U.S. law utilized to unmask foreign influence in domestic politics has been the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938. While enforcement of FARA had steadily increased in recent years, the first few months of the second Trump administration created uncertainty surrounding the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) prioritization of investigations involving FARA. In the meantime, multiple states are taking up the enforcement mantle with legislation of their own that have disclosure requirements very similar to those contained in FARA. With recent indications from the administration and the DOJ that FARA is still alive and well, risk will exist on multiple fronts for companies and organizations that have ties to foreign entities, receive fundings from foreign sources, and interact with foreign governments.

Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)

FARA aims to prevent covert influence by foreign entities, including foreign governments, political parties, or any foreign individual or organization by requiring agents of foreign principals to register when they are engaging in political activities or activities designed to influence state or U.S. policy.¹ This requirement is meant to create transparency surrounding foreign influence on American politics exerted through the actions of individuals and organizations acting on the ultimate behalf of foreign sources. The statute, as written and previously enforced, reaches broadly to address political and quasi-political activities for a diverse number of organizations that collaborate with foreign entities and potentially promote foreign interests.

DOJ’s Position on FARA

In a February 2025 memo, however, Attorney General Pam Bondi narrowed the types of FARA-involved cases the DOJ would investigate, limiting prioritization to “more traditional espionage” cases without providing additional guidance on the intended scope.² In the same memo, Attorney General Bondi disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which was formed in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 election and charged with combating foreign influence operations targeting democratic institutions and values inside the United States. Despite these announcements, the FARA Unit at the DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD) — responsible for administration and enforcement of FARA and crimes involving international terrorism — was left intact. The DOJ also retained resources to address domestic terrorism, as the NSD also coordinates domestic terrorism investigations and cases and works with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) that investigate and defend against domestic terrorism.  

Less than eight months later, in his September 25, 2025, National Security Presidential Memorandum /NSPM-7 (Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence) (NSPM-7), President Trump appears to have breathed new life into FARA to address domestic terrorism.³ In particular, NSPM-7 introduced that “[a] new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.” NSPM-7 further instructs the National JTTF and its local offices to investigate “non-governmental organizations and American citizens residing abroad or with close ties to foreign governments, agents, citizens, foundations, or influence networks engaged in violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (22 U.S.C. 611 et seq.) or money laundering by funding, creating, or supporting entities that engage in activities that support or encourage domestic terrorism.” It directly calls out tax-exempt entities that are “directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.”

A leaked memorandum from Attorney General Bondi dated December 4, 2025, laid out the DOJ’s plan for implementing NSPM-7. This implementation includes mandatory referral of suspected domestic terrorism to JTTFs “for the exhaustive investigation contemplated by NSPM-7” and instructs the JTTFs to “use all available investigative tools . . . to map the full network of culpable actors involved in the referred conduct inside and outside the United States.” Citing to Section 3 of NSPM-7, Bondi calls for the FBI, in coordination with JTTF partners, to compile a list of groups or entities engaged in domestic terrorism and provide such a list to the DOJ’s Deputy Attorney General.

Attorney General Bondi’s December Memo also broadens the scope of “domestic terrorism” to include “organized doxing of law enforcement, mass rioting and destruction in our cities, violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement, targeting of public officials or other political actors, etc.” and defines “common characteristics of domestic terrorists and organizations” as those that maintain an “anti-fascist platform that justifies violence and other means necessary to combat perceived ‘fascism.’” So, while FARA may be limited on the foreign influence front more generally, the government may use this authority to investigate organizations and individuals within the context of this expanded definition of domestic terrorism.⁴

States Fill the Enforcement Gap

Amidst the uncertainty of the government’s appetite to enforce FARA to prevent foreign influence more broadly, states are stepping in to fill the regulatory void as they have done so in other areas of reduced federal enforcement, such as antitrust and consumer protection. As of the end of 2025, at least 20 states had enacted bans on foreign contributions to ballot measure campaigns, and more states had introduced legislation. For example, proposed legislation in New York — the Democracy Preservation Act — would prohibit contributions by foreign-owned business entities where a foreign national holds, owns or control 50% or more of the corporation.⁵

Some states, such as Florida, have enacted statutes addressing foreign investment in general. In 2023, Florida enacted a statute that generally restricts governmental entities from contracting with or issuing economic development incentives to entities associated with foreign “countries of concern,” which include seven countries designated in the statute.⁶ The investing entities are not limited to governmental or state-owned enterprises but instead can include private companies or individuals. In 2025, Florida enacted additional legislation prohibiting nonprofits, fundraisers, and related entities from accepting contributions, whether direct or indirect, from persons associated with “foreign countries of concern.”⁷

More directly, states have been enacting their own versions of FARA or “FARA-lite” laws. Earlier this year, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Nebraska enacted state-level foreign influence laws — all of which became effective by December 1, 2025 — and several other states introduced similar legislation. As a rule, the enacted or proposed legislations require registration not only of government officials or party representatives but also of private entities or individuals. For example, the Texas law requires registration by anyone who lobbies on behalf of a “foreign adversary,” “foreign adversary client,” or “foreign adversary political party” and extends the mandate to private entities or individuals doing business in Texas.⁸ The definition of “foreign adversary” in that law is expansive, including any “subsidiary or parent of a business organization” that is “wholly or partly owned or operated” by a foreign adversary nation. The definition of “foreign adversary client” is similarly broad and includes current or former executives and officers of such businesses, as well as their family members and any other business entity they may form in the future.

While most of the state statutes (with the exception of California’s SB 1151) apply to specific federally-designated foreign adversaries — China, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran — the statutes are inconsistent in how they determine the extent of a covered business or personal relationship to those foreign adversaries. As a further challenge to complying with each of these laws, the state corollaries to FARA lack some or all of the commercial, legal, and lobbying exemptions present in federal FARA. Additionally, they also tend to lack spending thresholds, meaning any covered activity triggers a registration requirement.

In short, the states’ foreign investment statutes or their answers to federal FARA present significant risks for organizations and businesses who operate in multiple states and also have foreign ties, particularly given the broad/varying definitions and the inconsistent exemptions in each state.

Recommendations

Given the heightened risk in the new year of enforcement on multiple fronts, any individual or organization with foreign ties that is engaged in political or “quasi-political” activities would be wise to adopt the following measures:

• Identify all avenues of foreign influence that may exist, regardless of the existence of any formalized contract or agreement;
• Evaluate whether you or your organization’s activities trigger registration requirements and whether any exemptions exist;
• Develop a thorough understanding of the foreign investment and influence laws that apply in each of the jurisdictions in which you or your organization conduct relevant activities; and
• Examine relationships with any foreign individual or group that might draw increased scrutiny due to current geopolitical issues or stated administration priorities.

If you have questions or concerns about the issues raised in this article, please reach out to any of the authors or your Foley & Lardner attorney.