To run an office in China, a foreign nonprofit has to register with the Ministry of Public Security, China's police, and find a Chinese government sponsor willing to vouch for it.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has been operating in Beijing since the mid-1990s. Today its China program has more than 40 staff and a $4.2 million annual budget.
Its super PAC, NRDC Action Votes, has also spent $5 million this year trying to beat Republicans in Senate and House races. About $3 million of it, roughly 60%, is aimed at one man: Ohio Sen. Jon Husted.
NRDC is a heavyweight, with $650 million in assets. Its traditional PAC, NRDC Action Fund, has written checks to Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin. The Action Fund also bankrolls the super PAC, supplying about $3.08 million of the $3.09 million it reported raising through August.
The $5 million is spread across eight Republican targets in Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Wisconsin. Ohio gets the most.
NRDC wants Husted's seat back in the hands of Democrat Sherrod Brown, who scored a lifetime 2% on the American Energy Alliance's energy scorecard. That's 2 out of 100. A coin flip would have scored better.
Brown voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, which poured hundreds of billions of dollars into solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicle batteries. China dominates the supply chains for all three. Husted is running on American energy, made in America.
NRDC isn't stopping at its own super PAC. It's also part of a $9 million campaign with the League of Conservation Voters and EDF Action blaming Husted for Ohio's FirstEnergy bribery scandal. Husted was never charged with anything in that case.
Brown has raised roughly $70 million, more than three times Husted's $20 million. The out-of-state climate money is stacked on top of that.
Republicans have been asking questions about NRDC and China for years. In June 2018, Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, then chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas wrote to NRDC's president. They pointed out that the group seemed to go easy on Chinese officials, and asked whether it should be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They also asked for records of any payments from Chinese officials.
NRDC denied acting as a foreign agent. Earthjustice, another environmental group that got a similar letter, registered under the act the following year.
NRDC calls its China work international cooperation on the environment. Meanwhile, China keeps building coal plants faster than any country on earth.
The fight extends to Wisconsin's governor's race, where Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany faces Democrat David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive. In May 2025, Crowley signed a net-zero plan for Milwaukee County with a $441 million price tag and a 2050 deadline. That's nearly half a billion local tax dollars to hit a climate target China doesn't even attempt.
Tiffany has gone straight at the green-lawsuit machine. He sponsored H.R. 8330 to limit the climate liability lawsuits activist groups use to drag energy producers into court. He also introduced the Farm Act to end taxpayer subsidies for wind and solar projects on farmland. He's exactly the kind of Republican NRDC wants gone.
To keep its Beijing office, NRDC answers to China's Ministry of Public Security. To beat Jon Husted, it's spending $3 million in Ohio.