Americans for Public Trust on Friday launched a database that will aid lawmakers, watchdogs and more in following the flow of foreign money and its influence on American politics, with the database having already tracked over $5 billion in foreign spending and counting.
Executive director of Americans for Public Trust Caitlin Sutherland told The Center Square: “As we enter the height of midterm election season, it is critical that the public is aware of the vast sums of foreign funds flowing across our borders to influence the outcomes of our political battles.”
Americans for Public Trust is a nonprofit dedicated to “restoring trust by holding the powerful accountable,” according to its website.
Sutherland told The Center Square that “whether through ballot initiatives, issue advocacy, or voter registration, American politics is indisputably being shaped by foreign cash.”
“That’s why we’ve created this first-of-its-kind database to help the public untangle the complex web of foreign money bankrolling leftwing nonprofits,” Sutherland said.
“Stopping the flow of billions of dollars in foreign funds into our political system should be a top priority for every lawmaker interested in safeguarding the integrity and sovereignty of our elections and political systems,” Sutherland said.
Americans for Public Trust’s (APT) new database entitled Follow Foreign Money has so far tracked 523 groups, uncovered 12,094 records, and tracked over $5 billion in foreign spending and counting.
APT stated that “foreign governments, foreign charities, and foreign nationals are actively exploiting loopholes on the state and federal level that allow their money to flow into important policy fights and electoral tools.”
“Foreign money funding advocacy in the United States is a threat to our democracy and must be exposed and stopped,” APT stated.
APT said that foreign money as a political contribution is prohibited by federal law, but that many “election-related activities” such as lobbying, protests, ballot harvesting, and ballot issue campaigns can be funded by foreign dollars.
Recipients of some of the largest foreign donations include the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the ClimateWorks Foundation, and the Gates Medical Research Institute, but the list extends much beyond those three.
Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss’ name appears often as a foreign donor to various groups, including the Sixteen Thirty Fund to whom he has given over $300 million.
In 2024, as The Center Square reported, the Sixteen Thirty Fund helped to prop up the Amendment 3 campaign that enshrined abortion into Missouri’s state constitution. At the time, Missouri Sen. Ben Brown used this as an example of the danger posed by foreign nationals donating to ballot issue campaigns, as foreigners can “essentially purchase amendments” to a state constitution with their millions.
Missouri joined many other states in banning foreign money from funding ballot issue campaigns.
Other foreign donors to U.S. nonprofits include the London-based Arcadia Fund, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the IKEA Foundation and more.
APT noted that higher education is also affected by foreign donations, with “nearly $12 billion from China and Qatar – countries that are openly hostile to the United States – [having] flooded the American higher education system for decades.”
Additionally, climate activism in the nation has been backed by foreign funding, as “a group of foreign ‘charities’ has spent almost $2 billion bankrolling U.S. policy fights and advancing an extreme climate agenda,” APT said.
