The United States Labels Nonprofits as Foreign Threats, Borrowing from an Authoritarian Playbook

In Defense of Civil Society, a column from the staff at Protect Democracy, provides timely, research-driven analysis on why protecting American democracy requires protecting civil society and how nonprofits can navigate this moment, stand in solidarity, and continue our mission-oriented work.

In recent months, there has been increasing government scrutiny of nonprofits for alleged involvement in “foreign” activity, including receiving foreign funding and supposedly supporting foreign terrorism. Congressional committees are hauling nonprofit leaders before them to probe “foreign influence.” The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an investigation into the Open Society Foundations on allegations including material support for terrorism.

Nonprofits must now navigate both genuine legal compliance obligations and politically motivated attacks dressed up in the language of national security. Moreover, these labels—”terrorist,” “foreign agent,” “enemy”—threaten to stigmatize and sideline nonprofits even if they face no legal repercussions.

These tactics are not new. Authoritarian leaders around the world have long wielded them to delegitimize dissent and weaken civil society organizations. “Foreign agent”-style laws have become a preferred instrument for authoritarians from Russia to Hungary. In this piece, we explore how authoritarians abroad have used foreign agent labels and legislation to stifle civil society, connect those tactics to what is happening domestically, and offer ways the nonprofit community can stand together against them.

Russia’s Foreign Agent Blueprint

Russia’s 2012 foreign agent law has been used to target civil society and stymie critics of the regime for more than a decade. The law requires any nonprofit receiving even minimal international funding to register as a foreign agent—a term with Soviet-era connotations of espionage and betrayal. Earlier restrictions on Russian civil society—enacted in response to the supporting role NGOs played in successful pro-democracy movements in neighboring Ukraine and Georgia—laid the groundwork for the 2012 law. Successive amendments have expanded the law’s scope and strengthened criminal penalties to target those who support international organizations or foreign governments deemed “hostile” to Russia. Penalties now include fines and prison sentences of up to five years. Since 2022, no proof of foreign funding is even required for designation as a foreign agent—any “foreign influence,” including interviews with foreign media outlets, is sufficient to trigger the designation.

Russian officials have used the law expansively to discredit political opponents, punish dissent, and curb attempts at solidarity. In 2019, for instance, the Kremlin deployed the “foreign agent” label to set in motion its campaign against opposition leader Alexei Navalny, triggering years of punitive attacks that culminated in his eventual arrest and 2024 death. The registry of foreign agents more than doubled in the two years following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, reaching over 900 individuals and organizations by early 2025. Russian authorities have weaponized both foreign agent and anti-terrorism laws to prosecute individuals and organizations simply for discussing the war in Ukraine. More recent versions of the law now require the Russian people to actively discriminate against designated foreign agents or face legal liability themselves—with deleterious effects for schools, businesses, and anyone who fears the government’s retribution.

The result has been a chilling of Russian civil society organizations. Organizations ranging from anticorruption watchdogs to HIV-prevention groups to diabetes service providers have shuttered or dramatically curtailed their work under the weight of stigmatizing labels, overwhelming reporting requirements, and vanishing funding. Memorial, a renowned human rights organization that documented political repression under Stalin and other Soviet leaders, was forced to dissolve its operations in Russia in 2022 after being designated a foreign agent. Still, the group continued to carry out limited work abroad, for which it later received a Nobel Peace Prize. But last month, the Russian Supreme Court escalated the crackdown, calling the entire “Memorial international civic movement” an “extremist” organization, and putting anyone associated with it at risk of government scrutiny. Memorial has since called on Russians to halt donations, “remove logos and links on social media,” and delete compromising content on all digital devices, warning that “people could draw attention from law enforcement agencies even by subscribing to Memorial channels.”

Critically, none of this has made Russia safer—despite the Kremlin’s rhetoric that these organizations undermine national security. These laws do not address public safety nor have they protected Russian civilians in the war against Ukraine. Instead, foreign agent laws have shuttered civil society organizations that provided support and refuge to crime victims and are used to target political opposition to Putin’s regime, including silencing voices critical of the war. Russia’s model has become the blueprint for similar laws; more than 60 countries have since adopted or proposed copycat foreign agent legislation.

Hungary’s Scapegoating of NGOs

In Hungary, authoritarians have also weaponized the “foreign influence” label to go after perceived opponents. Viktor Orbán’s government recently suffered a definitive loss at the polls. But it mounted a yearslong campaign against philanthropist George Soros and the civil society organizations he supports. Orbán accused them of wanting to funnel terrorists into the country through illegal immigration—a framing adopted by politicians in the United States to target nonprofits. The “Stop Soros” laws of 2018 criminalized assistance to undocumented migrants and framed pro-democracy work as foreign interference. More recently, Orbán called for intensified scrutiny of “fake NGOs,” claiming that EU influence is corrupting Hungarian organizations, and—taking a page out of the Kremlin’s playbook—accused the opposition of being agents of foreign powers.

In 2024, the government established the Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO), which has sweeping investigatory authority to target purported foreign influence within civil society. The SPO operates beyond the bounds of judicial review, and it can freely access and publicize information before recommending any adverse action by law enforcement. Shortly after his election victory last month, Prime Minister Péter Magyar promised to “immediately abolish” the SPO, echoing concerns that it served primarily as a conduit for Orbán allies to punish their opponents.

During the recent election campaign, there was growing fear that opposition leaders were under pressure to keep civil society and NGOs at arm’s length—not because they disagreed with their missions, but because association itself became a political liability. This “divide-and-conquer” effect is one of the most insidious consequences of the “foreign” label: Solidarity becomes harder when proximity to a targeted group carries reputational risk.

The United States Follows Suit

The Trump administration’s recent campaign to counter so-called “foreign terrorism” and “foreign influence” is also really an attempt to punish dissenting voices at home. The government’s interconnected efforts to pursue “antifa” and other “far-left extremists” both at home and abroad make this abundantly clear.

Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September 2025, President Trump issued an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization (despite a shaky legal foundation to do so). This order was followed by a slew of foreign designations. In November 2025, the administration designated four European groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) over alleged ties to antifa—the first time FTO designations have been used in connection with antifascist activism—despite the fact that none of the groups had engaged in direct violence against the United States. An executive order directing the designation of certain international Muslim Brotherhood chapters as FTOs came soon after.

FTO designations carry serious consequences for the designated organization and for anyone—namely, domestic organizations—accused of providing material support to a designated FTO, including money, training, personnel, and even expert advice. In this context, the foreign and the domestic are closely linked. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress have been pressing a narrative that links antifa and other “extremist” organizations at home with alleged foreign counterparts, all under the umbrella of threats to national security.

National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7) and a subsequent DOJ enforcement memo (issued in September and December, respectively), instruct the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices to investigate and prosecute “anti-American” violence and give the executive branch latitude to target enumerated viewpoints it considers likely to “animate” violence.

This is not a government focused on national security. It is a government using the language of foreign influence to go after domestic political opponents.

Among other things, these orders explicitly reference the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and the threat posed by domestic organizations with ties to “foreign governments, agents, citizens, foundations, or influence networks.” FARA—a 1938 law requiring “agents of a foreign principal” engaged in certain activities to register with the Justice Department and disclose their activities to the public—is a notoriously broad statute and imposes significant burdens on nonprofits required to register, including onerous reporting requirements, lengthy audits, and a stigmatizing label.

As a result, some have rightly argued that NSPM-7 and the corresponding memo have created a “dangerous drift” toward redefining any protests criticizing the administration as terrorism. Others have noted the government is “twisting the counterterrorism machinery of the U.S. government to go after domestic political opponents.”

Tying It Together

The Trump administration and authoritarian regimes abroad are reinforcing each other’s tactics—sometimes explicitly.

Echoing Trump, in September 2025, Orbán initiated steps to designate antifa a terrorist organization. Last month, just days before Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary elections, Vice President Vance visited Budapest in a show of support for Orbán. (Ironically, Vance’s remarks in Budapest focused on protecting Hungary’s national “sovereignty,” accusing the EU of conducting one “of the worst examples of foreign election interference,” all while the Trump administration broke US precedent by publicly endorsing a foreign political campaign.) And now the United States is planning to convene an international “antifa summit,” bringing together officials from various nations to share intelligence on global left-wing extremist movements. Administration officials are openly hunting for links between Americans and left-wing extremists abroad—now a stated goal of the president’s new counterterrorism strategy—while encouraging other countries to investigate “far-left terrorism.”

Just as Russian and Hungarian crackdowns have failed to make those countries safer, the Trump administration has otherwise made clear that it is not actually serious about countering foreign influence or other threats. The Foreign Malign Influence Center, created specifically to combat foreign interference in US elections, has been restructured amid sweeping cuts. The administration has also gutted the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; slashed the budget of the International Republican Institute, which has worked to counter foreign authoritarian influence from China (among other nations); eliminated the State Department’s Office of Countering Violent Extremism; and depleted national security and counterintelligence offices.

Once a government tells its citizens that hidden enemies are everywhere, the hunt to find them never ends.

This is not a government focused on national security. It is a government using the language of foreign influence to go after domestic political opponents.

To be clear: There are legitimate reasons for governments to investigate undue foreign influence in civil society organizations. Transparency around funding sources can serve genuine public interests. And a strategic counterterrorism agenda is essential for national security. But that is not what is happening here—and it is not what has happened in Russia or Hungary.

These “foreign” labels serve the same underlying purpose: to paint political opponents as dangerous enemies, to chill the organizations best positioned to strengthen communities and hold the government accountable, and to create enough distrust and division that the public looks the other way while those in power consolidate their grip. They transform lawful advocacy into something that sounds sinister and make solidarity feel like a security risk.

Moreover, once a government tells its citizens that hidden enemies are everywhere, the hunt to find them never ends. There will always be another threat, another organization to investigate, another label to apply. This, in turn, justifies the government’s increasing crackdown on civil society. While the machinery of political control grows, the ability for individuals and organizations to freely and safely express their opinions weakens.

What We Can Take Away

There is real cause for concern—but also for resolve. For nonprofits navigating this environment, it’s worth keeping in mind the following:

It’s hard to resist the divide-and-conquer strategy, but solidarity still matters. One of the most corrosive effects of the foreign agent or terrorism designations—whether in Russia, Hungary, or the United States—is that it makes solidarity itself risky. When association with a targeted organization can trigger criminal penalties, funding losses, or reputational damage, the natural instinct is to keep your distance. That is precisely what the tactic is designed to do. Organizations can still support each other by implementing strong coalition security and developing contingency plans in the event one of their partners (or their sector) comes under scrutiny. (Protect Democracy’s guide on Operational Security for Coalitions offers a starting point.)

Moreover, we can better practice solidarity by recognizing when the administration uses the threat of foreign influence as a pretext to target speech and association. Organizations can and should ensure compliance with existing obligations under anti-terrorism law and applicable foreign registration requirements. But we should be clear-eyed about the political nature of these attacks and confident in naming them as such, while continuing to do the substantive work that serves our communities and garners public support.

Russia and Hungary offer lessons on how nonprofits can adapt and resist. In Russia, many NGOs refused to register or accept the “foreign agent” designation, though this rarely succeeded in stymying the government’s efforts. Instead, civil society groups have opted to give up their official status, change their funding model, or reorganize as new entities to maintain their operations. For example, Alexei Navalny’s anticorruption organization was one of the first to shift to an online donor model following the enactment of the 2012 foreign agent law. And some NGOs and their leaders, including independent journalists and media organizations, have moved their operations abroad. In Hungary, groups like the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union provide a model for diversifying funding and countering government threats with increased transparency, which it has since leveraged to build public trust and encourage greater grassroots support. Early coordination and solidarity among NGOs laid the groundwork for legal challenges that successfully slowed some of the government’s efforts to silence civil society.

Look ahead to the midterm elections. With the 2026 midterm elections approaching, there is every reason to expect that these tactics will be deployed more aggressively against organizations engaged in voter mobilization, election monitoring, and support for protesters and rapid response networks. The Department of Justice has signaled an intent to more aggressively prosecute protesters, and we’re already seeing counterterrorism statutes weaponized against ICE protestors. Congressional oversight committees are investigating organizations to further political goals, accusing “foreign-funded” nonprofits of illegally supporting “violent” protest activity.

Much like in Russia and Hungary, the goal is to tilt the electoral playing field, making it that much harder for the political opposition to participate and compete freely and fairly in upcoming elections. But Viktor Orbán’s recent defeat after 16 years of repressive governance highlights how politically motivated attacks on civil society and NGOs can be thwarted by naming the autocrat’s strategy clearly, supporting one another across organizational lines, and continuing to do the work—that is how civil society holds the line.