In a bold move aimed at tightening the seams of America’s election security, Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) has introduced legislation that election integrity experts are calling a long-overdue response to a serious and largely overlooked vulnerability in U.S. federal law: the ability of foreign nationals to influence domestic political outcomes through indirect campaign activities and ballot initiatives.
Hagerty’s bill, introduced last week, would ban foreign nationals from funding a wide array of electoral and advocacy activities, including ballot initiative campaigns, voter registration drives, ballot harvesting operations, voter identification efforts, and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns. The legislation seeks to close critical loopholes that currently allow foreign actors — including foreign-based charities and billionaires — to pour money into American political infrastructure at the state and issue level.
While federal law already prohibits foreign nationals from contributing directly to federal candidates or parties, a glaring loophole remains when it comes to state ballot measures and issue advocacy campaigns. As Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, put it: “Everywhere we look, we see that foreign nationals are bankrolling these advocacy campaigns and policy fights in the United States.”
And the numbers are eye-popping. A recent report from Americans for Public Trust found that five foreign charities have pumped an estimated $2 billion into U.S.-based climate organizations engaged in lobbying, policy advocacy, and even litigation. These include massive contributions from entities like:
- Quadrature Climate Foundation (UK) – $530 million
- Oak Foundation (Switzerland) – $750 million
- Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (UK) – $553 million
- KR Foundation (Denmark) – $36 million
- Laudes Foundation (Switzerland) – $20 million
One striking example cited in the report is a $6 million grant from the UK-based Quadrature Climate Foundation to the San Francisco-based ClimateWorks Foundation for “financial regulation advocacy to address climate risk” — in other words, foreign influence targeting U.S. financial policy under the climate change umbrella.
The bill also directly confronts the outsized influence of Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire who has funneled $280 million into U.S. political influence networks, most notably through the Sixteen Thirty Fund — a left-wing “dark money” behemoth that itself has funneled over $130 million into ballot measure campaigns across the country. Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, noted that under current law, there’s little preventing other foreign nationals — including adversaries in China, Russia, or Iran — from replicating Wyss’s strategy.
Hagerty’s proposal isn’t just about climate policy or left-wing causes. It’s a structural response to a legal gap that, critics argue, has allowed billions in foreign capital to seep into America’s democratic processes — not through campaign donations, but through issue-based political infrastructure that shapes voter behavior, public opinion, and legislative outcomes.
Though at least nine states have enacted laws to ban foreign funding in state-level ballot campaigns, there’s no uniform federal restriction, leaving a patchwork of protections easily exploited by sophisticated networks operating across borders.
