Foreign Governments Are Ripping Us Apart: Rep. Luna Pushes FARA Enforcement

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is preparing for an onslaught of attacks. On Friday, she announced that she’s working to restore enforcement by the office of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). While technically open, the FARA unit, part of the Justice Department, has been largely dormant.

“Foreign governments have been intentionally ripping this country apart for their own benefit and it needs to stop. The American people expect their elected leaders to protect them and this effort is apart [sic] of that,” Luna posted Friday on her X account. “As we work to reopen the FARA office and push for disclosures for influencers taking foreign money (from any country), I am prepared for coordinated attacks and targeted social media disinformation campaigns on this platform, with increased bot activity, etc.” She then asked people to “stay vigilant and think critically about the information you see online.”

The issue of foreign interference in American politics has become a major topic of public conversation, thanks largely to right-wing influencers and a small number of Republican legislators (or former legislators).

AIPAC’s Targeting of Massie

A lot of the finger-pointing has been directed toward pro-Israel lobbies, with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, serving as the primary target.

AIPAC openly bragged about playing a role in ousting Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in the May 19 primary race. Massie, as it happens, helped paint a bullseye on AIPAC when he laid out the lobby’s influence and power during an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired in June 2024. Interestingly, AIPAC is not even considered a foreign agent. But Massie is trying to change that. Just days before losing his re-election race this year, he introduced a bill to amend FARA in a way that would likely require AIPAC to register as a foreign agent. As we recently reported:

[FARA] already requires certain agents of foreign principals to register with the Justice Department (DOJ) and disclose their work. Massie’s proposal targets what he calls a loophole for U.S.-based organizations that do not directly receive foreign-government money or instructions, yet lobby in ways that principally benefit a foreign nation.

Massie appears to be among the very few — if not the only Republican — who have refused AIPAC money.

President Donald Trump has taken a pile of money from pro-Israel elements. The online project Track AIPAC says he has taken $230 million since 2020, with Miriam Adelson’s Preserve America PAC alone slapping down a whopping $215 million into his 2020 and 2024 re-election campaigns.

Congressional Recipients of AIPAC Money

Even Luna herself is a recipient of AIPAC money. According to the AIPAC tracker, the pro-Israeli lobby group has given her $27,289. Many social media users pointed this out in comments responding to Luna’s FARA announcement.

The list of Democrats who don’t receive AIPAC money appears longer. It includes radical members of “the Squad” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), among others.

Comparatively speaking, Luna has taken less money from AIPAC than every other federal lawmaker out of Florida. As expected, Republican Randy Fine is among those who’ve taken a substantially larger sum; he’s taken about half a million dollars — $496,299 to be exact. But several others have received significantly more AIPAC money than Fine, including Democrat Lois Frankel ($820,719), Republican Brian Mast ($881,227), Republican Mario Diaz-Balart ($1,025,451), and Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose office has raked in $1,456,782. Schultz is also a former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

According to OpenSecrets, pro-Israel lobby groups spent nearly $20 million just in 2025. That’s less than the $50 million they spent in 2018, but more than they spent in 2024.  

Other Countries Lobbying

But Israel is not even close among the top countries pouring in money to influence American policy and narratives. The top spot, according to OpenSecrets, belongs to China, which has dropped more than half a billion dollars ($562 million) into lobbying since 2016. Japan is the next big foreign lobby spender ($505 million), followed by Liberia ($432 million). Qatar, a nation often touted by neocon inc. as the No. 1 sponsor of right-wing influencers, ranks just above Israel in lobby spending.

History, Purpose of FARA

FARA became law in 1938, primarily to address Nazi propaganda in the U.S. The point of FARA is “to shine a light on foreign-initiated propaganda and public influence campaigns,” as a report compiled by the law firm Saul Ewing LLP explains. “The rationale for requiring disclosure is to facilitate evaluation by the government and the American public of the activities of domestic agents who might otherwise be acting surreptitiously on behalf of unidentified foreign principals.” The firm explains how FARA is supposed to work:

FARA requires certain agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities, or other activities specified under the statute, to register with the FARA Unit. Registrants are required to periodically disclose certain aspects of their relationships with those foreign principals and to disclose receipts of foreign disbursements in support of their activities.

While technically still law, FARA enforcement has been largely nonexistent. This is what Luna says she wants to address.  

Among her first actions after becoming attorney general, Pam Bondi disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force, purportedly to “free resources to address more pressing priorities.” She also instructed that FARA criminal charges “be limited to instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.” As Ewing noted, “This seemed to mark a return to the pre-2016 era of FARA enforcement dormancy.” Furthermore,

FARA enforcement was re-energized after a 2016 Inspector General Report criticized the [Justice Department] for its FARA enforcement and management practices. In the subsequent years of FARA’s resurgence, DOJ stepped up enforcement, issued clarifying guidance and advisory opinions, and initiated the first rulemaking process in years.

For most of 2025, “FARA practice seemed routine.” But by the end of the year, things began to change. Ewing noted signs of weakening FARA enforcement:

[The] DOJ dismissed several charges in the Henry Cuellar case and President Trump pardoned Mr. Cuellar. President Trump also pardoned former New York Police Department officer Michael McMahon who had been accused of acting as an agent of China to harass certain Chinese dissidents. In addition, DOJ released several advisory opinions, only to quickly remove them from the FARA website.

Foreign Influence Nothing New

The problem of foreign influence on domestic politics is as old as the United States itself. George Washington warned about it in his farewell address. For Washington, the problem was French influence. Fresh in his mind was the French attempt to draw the U.S. in against its fight with Great Britain. The French dispatched their minister to the United States, Edmond Charles Genêt, to get America involved in its unneighborly squabbles. As the Office of the Historian documents:  

The French assigned Genêt several additional duties: to obtain advance payments on debts that the U.S. owed to France, to negotiate a commercial treaty between the United States and France, and to implement portions of the 1778 Franco-American treaty which allowed attacks on British merchant shipping using ships based in American ports.

President Washington wisely chose to stay neutral. He figured America would incur great harm if it didn’t stay out Europe’s fights.

Washington not only resisted France’s attempt to draw the U.S. in, but he tried to tamp down the acrimony among high-ranking members of his own Cabinet who had taken sides. He was less successful in that.  

Americans need to know which foreign countries are influencing policies, proposals, and narratives. What laws are being pushed by foreign interests, and who exactly are those interests? Which influencers are taking money from foreign interests, and what are those foreign interests? This is vital to creating policies and supporting narratives that are in the national interest.