Foreign money is pouring into ballot battles. Half the states aren’t ready.



Foreign billionaires and well-funded nongovernmental organizations can use a gap in federal election law to pour money into state ballot-measure campaigns. Half the states have yet to ban the practice, and some of those that have acted still leave openings for foreign-linked spending.

Federal law flatly bars foreign nationals from contributing to political candidates. State ballot initiatives and referenda, however, are treated differently under the Federal Election Campaign Act. Unless state law says otherwise, foreign nationals can spend to influence those measures. Because ballot campaigns can rewrite state constitutions, alter election rules, redraw districts, and affect turnout in candidate races, that distinction is no small matter.

No foreign government, foreign national, or foreign interest should have a hand in deciding the laws Americans live under.

One of the best-known examples involves Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss. Americans for Public Trust has documented hundreds of millions of dollars in Wyss giving to U.S. political nonprofits. The Honest Elections Project notes that the left-wing Sixteen Thirty Fund alone received $243 million from Wyss and spent more than $130 million on ballot issues in 25 states.

Those figures deserve one qualification. Nonprofit funds are commingled, so they do not prove that Wyss’ dollars paid for any particular ballot campaign. But money is fungible. The fact remains that current federal law permits an organization that receives enormous sums from a foreign national to spend heavily on domestic ballot measures.

Through that ballot-measure gap, the Honest Elections Project argues, foreign nationals can influence issues ranging from abortion and energy policy to redistricting and election law, while partisan groups can use ballot campaigns to help drive turnout in candidate races.

The legal history is clear. In Bluman v. FEC, a three-judge federal court upheld the federal ban on foreign nationals’ spending in candidate elections, and the Supreme Court summarily affirmed in 2012. But the district court also noted that the law does not bar foreign nationals from issue advocacy, including spending on ballot initiatives.

In a 2015 enforcement matter, FEC commissioners who voted to dismiss a complaint relied on that distinction. They wrote that the act “does not bar foreign nationals from issue advocacy” and that state and local ballot initiatives do not constitute an “election” under the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act.

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The FEC is unlikely to solve the problem on its own. The commission’s website notes that election laws outside the financing of federal elections are generally beyond its jurisdiction. In the 2015 matter, the commissioners were even more explicit: “The Commission has no authority to otherwise interpose itself as arbiter of who can participate in state and local ballot initiatives.”

A later FEC case reinforced the same approach. In 2021, the commission voted 4-2 to dismiss allegations involving foreign-national donations to a Montana ballot initiative committee. That leaves Congress and the states to close the gap if they choose.

States are free, subject to constitutional limits, to restrict foreign funding of ballot initiatives and referenda. Twenty-five states now have full or partial bans on foreign-national or foreign-government funding of ballot-measure campaigns.

Some laws are broader than others. California law, for example, bars foreign governments, foreign principals, and foreign nationals from funding state and local ballot measures. But a domestic subsidiary of a foreign corporation is treated as a foreign principal only when the decision to spend is made by a foreign officer, director, or management employee who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident — a limitation very easy to evade.

Arkansas offers a broader model. Its law applies to persons who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents, foreign governments, foreign political parties, and entities organized under foreign law or based abroad. It also bars direct or indirect donations to ballot-measure committees and requires committees to certify that they have not knowingly accepted prohibited funds, according to Ballotpedia.

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Congress has moved as well. On July 13, the House passed the Stop Foreign Funds in Elections Act by voice vote. The bill would extend the federal foreign-national ban to state and local ballot initiatives, referenda, and recall elections. The Senate received the measure the next day and referred it to the Committee on Rules and Administration, where it remains.

“No foreign government, foreign national, or foreign interest should have a hand in deciding the laws Americans live under,” co-sponsor Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said in a statement after House passage. Ballotpedia likewise reported the measure’s passage and its referral to the Senate.

States need not wait for Congress. Lawmakers can review their own statutes and close gaps that permit foreign nationals or foreign-controlled entities to fund ballot campaigns. Citizens and members of the press can use Ballotpedia’s state-by-state chart to see which restrictions are already in place and which proposals remain pending.

Foreign funding of referenda and ballot initiatives gives people with no vote in the matter a legal avenue to spend heavily on the laws Americans live under. States should exercise their power to curb the practice, and the public should insist that they do so.

One atmosphere, 50 courts — what could go wrong?



The Supreme Court opened its new term Monday with one of the most consequential climate cases in years. The justices do not have to decide whether climate change is real or whether carbon dioxide warms the planet. They face a more basic question: Who pays the tab?

In Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, Boulder County and the city of Boulder want ExxonMobil and Suncor to pay under Colorado law for local costs they attribute to global warming, while also alleging deceptive marketing. The Colorado Supreme Court allowed the claims to proceed.

A Colorado jury cannot set national climate policy, but a patchwork of state tort verdicts could begin to approximate one.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether federal law precludes them and whether it has jurisdiction to decide that question at this stage. The Trump administration is backing the companies.

This is not simply about two oil companies and one county. Boulder’s alleged injuries trace to greenhouse gases accumulated in a single global atmosphere over generations, from energy used in every state and nearly every country. Yet Colorado tort law would determine liability for selected companies.

Now multiply that. California could have one theory of damages, New York another, Hawaii a third. Nearly 60 state and local governments have brought similar cases. Different juries could impose different costs for alleged harms arising from the same global emissions pool. If every jurisdiction can pursue its own theory, climate tort begins to look less like compensation for a local injury and more like carbon pricing by litigation.

Boulder says it is applying ordinary state tort law, not regulating emissions. But whatever label courts use, large judgments against energy producers will not remain confined to the courthouse.

Then there is China. According to the Global Carbon Project, China accounts for roughly 32% of global fossil carbon dioxide emissions, compared with about 13% for the United States. A Colorado court cannot impose comparable liability on Chinese state-owned producers for emissions in China. That asymmetry is hard to ignore.

New York offers a warning. Its Climate Change Superfund Act sought $75 billion from fossil fuel companies for historical emissions. One federal judge struck it down on August 31; another did the same on September 23. Both relied on the Clean Air Act and the federal government’s authority over foreign affairs. Those cases involved a state statute rather than tort claims, but they show that the federalism problem is not theoretical.

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The lawsuits also leave out the other side of the ledger. Fossil fuels underpin synthetic nitrogen fertilizer that supports food production for roughly half the world, along with medical plastics, sterile packaging, transportation, and dispatchable power. A tort case can price alleged harms without pricing those benefits. Successful climate lawsuits would still raise costs somewhere in the system.

Nor did weather disasters begin with today’s carbon dioxide levels. The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people. In 1871, after a summer of drought, the Peshtigo fire burned more than a million acres and killed between 1,200 and 2,400 people. The Dust Bowl followed in the 1930s.

None of that settles the science. It shows something narrower: Disaster causation is not binary. A court asked to assign one company a share of a particular drought, fire, or flood must separate baseline risk from any incremental climate effect and then apportion responsibility across global emissions.

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Then comes the question of who pays. Energy demand is relatively inelastic in the short run. To the extent that judgments raise costs for American suppliers, some of those costs will be passed through at the pump, on heating and electricity bills, and in the price of goods. Lower-income households spend a larger share of their budgets on energy, so they feel increases most.

Congress can write national climate law. The EPA can regulate within the authority Congress gives it. Voters can hold both accountable. A Colorado jury cannot set national climate policy, but a patchwork of state tort verdicts could begin to approximate one.

The justices do not have to settle climate science. They have to decide whether state courts, one lawsuit at a time, may impose liability for a global emissions problem.

The answer should be no.

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The 3 failed promises of gay 'marriage'



Many people supported gay marriage in good faith, based on promises its advocates made. Here are three assurances that are no longer so sure.

  1. LGBT people need marriage.
  2. Legalizing gay marriage will make LGBT people feel better.
  3. The kids will be all right.

The children of cohabiting same-sex couples seem to fare better than the children of legally married same-sex couples.

Failed promise #1: LGBT people need marriage.

The reality: Evidently, LGBT people don’t agree that they need marriage.

There has been no dramatic "rush to the altar" among same-sex couples. Recent Gallup data show that only 8% of Americans who identify as LGBTQ are married to a same-sex spouse, while 6.4% are living with a same-sex partner. By comparison, 11% of those who identify as LGBTQ are married to an opposite-sex spouse and another 11% are living with an opposite-sex partner.

These figures suggest that much of the increase in marriages among LGBTQ-identified individuals has been driven by bisexual or nonbinary people in opposite-sex relationships. Presumably, many of these individuals could have married the person of their choice, even under pre-Obergefell law.

Also please notice heterosexual people are marrying in much larger percentages than self-identified sexual minorities. Even after years of legally permitted same-sex marriage, same-sex-attracted persons are not drawn to married life “just like everyone else.” Redefining marriage did not radically transform the relationship behavior among same-sex-attracted individuals.

Failed promise #2: LGBT people will feel better if we redefine marriage.

The reality: The mental health numbers for sexual minorities have not improved. In fact, there is some evidence that their mental health has declined. Researchers have long observed that sexual minorities report higher rates of psychological distress than exclusively heterosexual populations. What remains contested is the explanation for those differences.

We were told that stigma and discrimination were driving elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental-health challenges. Reduce the stigma, and the disparities would narrow. Yet after extraordinary gains in legal recognition and cultural acceptance, including gay marriage in the U.S., the worldwide evidence is difficult to reconcile with the so-called minority stress theory.

A study using data from UCLA's Williams Institute compared different generations of sexual minorities, ranging from those shaped by the Stonewall era to those who came of age during the push for “marriage equality.” The expectation was that younger cohorts, who experienced significantly greater social acceptance, would demonstrate substantially better mental health outcomes.

But the study found that the “equality generation” experienced higher rates of psychological distress and suicidal tendencies.

The researchers acknowledged, and I quote, “Our findings are clearly inconsistent with the (minority stress) hypothesis” that declining social stigma would produce corresponding declines in mental health problems.

A 2025 systematic review of 123 studies from 31 countries reached a similar conclusion. The review found substantially higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and bipolar disorders among LGBTQI+ individuals than among the general population. Nor were the disparities small: The rates of distress among LGBTQ individuals were between eight and 11 times greater than the general population.

In fact, the combined studies found that 35.3% of LGBTQI+ individuals reported depressive disorders, compared with 3.8% of the general population, or nine times greater.

None of this proves that discrimination plays no role in mental health outcomes. But surely, if “minority stress” or discrimination were the primary explanation for the high rates of psychological distress, we would have seen some positive movement in these numbers. That is exactly what we do not see.

Failed promise #3: The kids will be all right.

The reality: High-quality recent evidence shows that children of married same-sex partners are not “all right.”

This topic is so important that it deserves its own article. For now, let me give you evidence that casts doubt on the very strong assurances the sexual revolutionaries gave us.

A 2017 study showed that by the fifth year of elementary school, young children in same-sex parent families had significantly lower emotional well-being on three different standardized measures.

The measures include:

  • interpersonal skills,
  • externalizing well-being (which includes things like aggression and acting out), and
  • internalizing well-being, which includes things like anxiety and depression.

Compared with children living with their married biological parents, the children in alternative living arrangements have higher levels of psychological problems. The children of same-sex parents, shown on the far right-hand side of the chart, have as great or even greater problems than other children, even children in alternative family forms.

The authors attribute those difficulties to higher instability, meaning that same-sex couples have more changes in relationships and living arrangements.

The 'hold constant' fallacy

But this shouldn’t make us feel any better about these findings. More instability in the parents’ relationship is not a factor that we can legitimately “hold constant” or “factor out,” as if it were a completely independent factor. The well-documented increased instability in same-sex parents’ relationship means the kids experience more divorces, breakups, re-partnering, changing living arrangements, and so on. This instability is part of the package of having same-sex parents.

This reminds me of researchers back in the day trying to say that single parenthood isn’t so bad, if you “hold constant” their income. But having a reduced income is part of the experience of having unmarried parents. This attempt to explain away an unwelcome finding in no more valid when applied to same-sex parents today than it was when applied to unmarried parents back in the 1990s.

Another study examined a wide range of family structures, including married biological parents, single parents, cohabiting couples, stepparent families, legally married same-sex couples, and same-sex cohabiting parents.

This study found that children with same-sex cohabiting parents were 3.3 times more likely than those with intact married biological parents to suffer serious emotional problems. Children with same-sex married parents were 5.4 times more likely to have serious emotional problems when compared with biological parents married to each other.

These empirical results directly contradict the assurances we were given prior to the Obergefell ruling. With man/woman parents, marriage supported better emotional outcomes for children than with any arrangement of unmarried man-woman parents. But with same-sex parents, the opposite was true. The children of cohabiting same-sex couples seem to fare better than the children of legally married same-sex couples.

And yes, these estimates were adjusted to eliminate the effect of demographic factors, such as the child’s race, sex, and age. We don’t really know what exactly accounts for these findings. But we can conclude this: The idea that “the kids will be fine” is no longer a slam-dunk, end-of-discussion statement.

Full disclosure: The author of this 2021 paper is my colleague, Fr. Paul Sullins, Ph.D. a retired professor of sociology. If you are going to dismiss him because his clerical collar indicates a conflict of interest, you should probably also dismiss the findings of self-described gay or lesbian scholars. They certainly have an interest in some research outcomes rather than others.

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Genderless marriage

In any case, I have shown enough to cast serious doubt of the assurances that advocates of genderless marriage gave us. Make no mistake, “genderless marriage” is a better description than “gay marriage.” The court removed the dual gender requirement for marriage. That was a tacit assertion that the sex of the body is irrelevant for marriage and by extension, irrelevant to parenthood.

We were told that gay people needed to get married. Evidently, not too many of them got that memo.

We were told that gay people would feel better. Evidently, and sadly, that is not the case.

Finally, we were told that the kids would be fine. The evidence I’ve presented shows that this is not self-evidently true.

People are making life-altering decisions based on the assurances of activists. The decision to have a child is not a decision that can easily be walked back if you figure out you had bad information.

It’s time to reopen these important conversations.

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