Daktilo1984 conducted an interview with Ashkhen Kazaryan, Senior Legal Fellow of The Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University, on the United States’ foreign agents law and its implementations.
The U.S. has had foreign agent legislation for many decades. Could you briefly summarize its evolution and how it has been applied in practice?
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted by the US Congress in 1938 to address the spread of foreign propaganda in the United States, at the time primarily to counter Nazi propaganda. In 1966, Congress amended FARA to redirect its emphasis away from political influences and toward individuals and entities acting on behalf of the economic interests of foreign principals. Since then, it was rarely used until 2017. FARA requires the registration of “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal…. ” (22 U.S.C. §611(c)(1)). An agent of a foreign principal is an individual or organization who directly or through any other person (i) engages within the United States in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (ii) acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (iii) within the United States solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value for or in the interest of such foreign principal; or (iv) within the United States represents the interests of such foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States.
Between 2017 and the present, the law has been more frequently enforced.. The statute was designed as a disclosure regime, requiring persons acting under the direction or control of a “foreign principal” to register with the Department of Justice and to disclose the nature of their relationship, the activities undertaken, and related financial transactions.
There are also a lot of “baby FARA” laws that have been recently passed on the state level in the US. During the 2025 legislative sessions, state lawmakers considered dozens of measures to restrict foreign influence in state and local politics, many paralleling the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act. Five baby FARA laws were enacted: Arkansas HB 1800 (effective July 15, 2025), Texas HB 119 (effective September 1, 2025), Nebraska LB 644 (effective October 1, 2025), Oklahoma HB 2762 (effective November 1, 2025), and Louisiana HB 686 (effective December 1, 2025). Although patterned on FARA, four of these laws apply only to activities on behalf of foreign principals from adversarial nations, including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela, and they omit the exemptions contained in federal law, creating broader disclosure and registration duties for lobbyists, consultants, and in-house employees representing foreign-affiliated clients.
Did the Trump administration (or recent administrations) change the approach to foreign agent legislation compared with earlier practice? If so, how?
In February 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum curtailing the Department of Justice’s use of criminal charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and related laws, limiting them to cases involving conduct akin to espionage by foreign government actors. The directive disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force and instructed the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section’s FARA Unit to prioritize civil enforcement, regulatory policy, and public guidance. This represents a decisive reversal of the Department’s recent expansion of FARA to cover sovereign wealth funds, foreign investment, and politically connected business figures, signaling a return to a narrower, national-security-oriented enforcement model.
As for the legislative branch, Congress is currently considering several bills to broaden disclosure and registration requirements related to the regulation of foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) and the Lobbying Disclosure Act (“LDA”): the Foreign Registration Obligations for Nonprofit Transparency (“FRONT”) Act (S. 2305), Disclosing Foreign Influence in Lobbying Act (S. 856/H.R. 1883) and the Lobbying Disclosure Improvement Act (S. 865/H.R. 1887). The FRONT Act, introduced in July 2025, would expand the definition of a foreign principal to include nonprofit organizations that receive any funding or thing of value from countries of concern, such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or Venezuela, thereby requiring such entities to register under FARA even if the foreign support is minimal. The bill would also bar these nonprofits from relying on the Lobbying Disclosure Act exemption, a change that could significantly affect charities, academic institutions, and advocacy groups engaged in international partnerships. Alongside this proposal, the Disclosing Foreign Influence in Lobbying Act and the Lobbying Disclosure Improvement Act would strengthen transparency in federal lobbying by requiring registrants to disclose foreign participation in their activities and to indicate whether they are using LDA registration to satisfy potential FARA obligations.
In recent years, how have NGOs and independent or dissenting media outlets influenced policy debates on foreign agent-type regulation in the U.S.?
In the past few years, NGOs, media advocacy groups, and experts have played a central role in steering U.S. debates on foreign agent regulation through public comment submissions, strategic litigation threats, and scholarly critique. For example, Public Citizen urged the DOJ in its comments on the 2025 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to maintain narrow exemptions and warned that expanded FARA obligations would aggravate First Amendment risks. Civil society has also challenged the notion that receipt of foreign funding should alone trigger registration, arguing that doing so would overregulate nonprofits and chill legitimate advocacy.
How would you describe the current state of freedom of speech in the U.S., and do you see any emerging, significant threats?
Freedom of speech in the United States remains doctrinally secure but faces mounting pressure in practice. The Supreme Court has consistently recognized that the First Amendment safeguards an exceptionally wide scope of protected expression. But new regulatory and political dynamics have been blurring the boundaries of state action, particularly in cases where government officials seek to influence or “jawbone” private actors, with the result of chilling speech. Efforts at both the federal and state levels to legislate on topics like artificial intelligence, misinformation, foreign influence, and extremist speech often produce vague or overbroad statutes that risk chilling protected expression. Parallel trends, including legislative interventions in academic and protest speech, the use of defamation and disclosure laws to intimidate journalists and advocacy groups, and the expansion of surveillance justified by national security concerns, further erode the practical exercise of free expression. The constitutional framework endures, but the cumulative effect of these developments represents the most significant test of First Amendment resilience since the mid-twentieth century. This will demand renewed vigilance to preserve the distinction between legitimate regulation and unconstitutional suppression.