Oklahoma Lawmakers Mull Mandatory Registration for Foreign Agents

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Oct 1, 2025 - 09:58 Updated: Oct 1, 2025 - 09:51
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Oklahoma Lawmakers Mull Mandatory Registration for Foreign Agents

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Oklahoma state senators are working on a state-level Foreign Agent Registration Act, amid growing concerns about influence operations by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Oklahoma state Sen. Brian Guthrie said concerns are on the rise about CCP agents operating in the state, and he wants to make sure any lobbyist working on behalf of the regime has to formally register their affiliation.

“China cares about what happens in Oklahoma just like they care about what happens in every other state in the United States,” Guthrie told The Epoch Times.

Guthrie said his concern is greater now because Department of Justice priorities have shifted to focus on Foreign Agent Registration Act prosecutions of espionage instead of those lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.
In recent years, Oklahoma has seen an influx of Chinese buyers moving to the state and purchasing plots of farmland to grow marijuana.

Oklahoma approved medical marijuana in 2018, licensing the cultivation and sale of marijuana within the state. By 2022, there were 8,400 farms growing marijuana. Around three-quarters of those have now shut down.

Of the 1,995 marijuana farms that remain, 85 percent have connections with Chinese owners or operators, according to Mark Woodward at the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.

The land purchases are also raising concerns about national security, as some are in close proximity to military bases, as discussed at a Sept. 18 House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing in Congress.

There have been multiple convictions in 2024 and 2025 of members of Chinese criminal organizations for illegal marijuana production in Oklahoma.

At the hearing on Sept. 18, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics director Donnie Anderson said there is an ongoing investigation of a grow site next to the McAlester Ammunition plant in Oklahoma. He said there are reports of suspicious activity, indicating the grows may serve a secondary purpose as an outpost for espionage on American military bases.

At the Oklahoma Senate meeting, Epoch Times senior editor Jan Jekielek explained that Chinese state security, Chinese triads, and business tycoons have been known to cooperate closely to achieve CCP objectives.

Jekielek also testified about how the CCP approaches influence operations. He highlighted China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which requires anyone under the jurisdiction of the CCP to spy for China and not to reveal that they are spying. He encouraged lawmakers to understand how the CCP views the conflict with the United States, as the CCP considers it a “whole of society” approach, and they are “actively waging a people’s war against America.”

Tom Rawlings, policy director at State Shield—an organization that opposes hostile foreign influence—testified about his personal experience observing CCP influence at Georgia Tech. He said he believes in increasing transparency, “so that we know, and legislators know, and government officials know if they’re dealing with a company that is under the yoke of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Georgia Tech University officials who took trips to China thought they were doing the right thing, Rawling said. The result was that Georgia Tech made an investment of $7 million in a campus collaboration with Tianjin University in China. Georgia Tech then pulled out of the relationship under pressure from Congress, Rawlings said.

Four other states, Nebraska, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah, have already passed laws requiring foreign agents to register if they are working for a nation-state defined as an adversary.

The Oklahoma Senate Judiciary Committee is still sorting out how such a law would actually be implemented and enforced. Further action is expected in the upcoming session in 2026.

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