Bipartisan bill targets foreign agents who threaten people in the US
Schiff and Curtis pushed a bill to punish foreign agents who menace dissidents in the US, adding up to 10 years and a first federal definition.
A bipartisan pair of senators introduced legislation Tuesday to give federal prosecutors a new weapon against foreign agents who threaten people inside the United States. Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, and Sen. John Curtis, a Republican, framed the measure as a response to transnational repression by governments including China and Iran.
The Stop Transnational Repression Act would create the first federal definition of the crime and add as much as 10 years to criminal sentences for people convicted under it. The proposal is aimed at conduct that can include stalking, online disinformation, harassment, intimidation, threats, cyberhacking, assault, attempted kidnapping and attempted murder. Victims often include dissidents, journalists, political opponents, religious and ethnic minorities, and diaspora and exile communities.
Chinese communities in the United States, along with pro-democracy activists and supporters of Taiwan, Tibet and Uyghur causes, have for years complained that Beijing uses agents and proxies to harass, spy on and intimidate them on U.S. soil. Senate staffers linked the push for the bill to China's new ethnic unity law, which took effect on July 1, because the law was viewed as giving Beijing a fresh legal basis to reach beyond its borders. The Chinese embassy in Washington rejected that premise and called the concept completely fabricated.
Iran gave lawmakers another example of the threat. In May, Jonathan Loadholt was sentenced to 10 years in prison for participating in a plot directed by the Government of Iran that targeted Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American journalist and human rights activist.
Congress has tried before to put transnational repression on firmer legal footing. Schiff introduced an earlier Stop Transnational Repression Act in 2023 and later a reporting bill that would have required the attorney general to track cases.
Freedom House recorded 126 new incidents of physical, direct transnational repression in 2025, bringing its database total to 1,375 cases from 2014 through 2025. More than half of last year’s incidents, 69 of 126, occurred in Southeast Asia and East Africa.
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