Your State Laws Arrived Pre-Written. Nobody Said From Where.

Executive Summary

• Model legislation — pre-written bills distributed by policy organizations to state lawmakers — has shaped American law for decades; what has changed is the scale, sophistication, and anonymity of funding behind the organizations producing it.
• A documented network of think tanks received over $206 million across two decades to produce domestic security legislation introduced in 43 states; original funders are systematically shielded from public view.
• Defense contractors (Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics) funded security policy research while holding billions in government contracts whose value depends on the security environment that research shapes.
• The Foundation for Defense of Democracies received a documented $2.5 million wire from the United Arab Emirates while publicly stating it did not accept foreign government funding.
• Senator Grassley's Think Tank Transparency Act — requiring disclosure of major donors — has been reintroduced in 2025 and 2026 without passage; bipartisan support exists but has not produced a floor vote.

When a bill passes your state legislature, the official record shows the name of the legislator who introduced it. What the record rarely shows is the name of the organization that wrote it, the donors who funded that organization, or the policy outcome those donors had an interest in seeing enacted.

This is not a recent phenomenon. Model legislation has been a feature of American lawmaking for decades. What has changed is the scale, sophistication, and anonymity of the funding flowing into the organizations that produce it — creating a legislative pipeline that shapes state law with minimal public awareness and less accountability than a municipal contractor.

The Pipeline in Practice

The mechanics follow a consistent pattern. A policy organization identifies a legislative priority aligned with its donors' interests, drafts statutory language, and distributes it to sympathetic lawmakers across multiple states through briefings, constituent contact programs, and affiliated expert testimony. Once bills are introduced, the same organization mobilizes public pressure — obscuring the fact that the campaign originated with a funded policy operation, not constituent demand.

The pipeline's efficiency is its most notable feature. A single organization can shape legislation in dozens of states simultaneously, with each bill appearing to be a locally generated response to constituent concern rather than a coordinated campaign. Legislators receive the draft, are briefed by articulate experts, and introduce legislation that appears to serve their constituents — often unaware of the full network behind the bills they file.

The Center for Public Integrity documented one such network producing identical or near-identical legislation in dozens of states — bills using the same statutory language introduced state after state while drafters' identities were scrubbed from the public record. "Because most states don't require disclosure of bill sources," the investigation found, "this process often occurs with minimal public scrutiny."

The Funding Architecture Behind the Bills

The organizations that produce model legislation are funded through the donor-advised fund infrastructure documented in earlier VALOR investigations. High-net-worth donors contribute to DAFs at Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, DonorsTrust, or similar vehicles; those funds distribute grants to policy organizations; the organizations produce legislation; the legislation shapes law. At every step, the donor's identity is shielded.

DonorsTrust — the primary vehicle for conservative dark money — held $1.4 billion in net assets as of the end of 2024 and distributed $195.3 million to more than 300 organizations in that year alone. Organizations at the center of documented model legislation campaigns are among its recipients. America First Legal Foundation received $21.3 million in 2024 — a 565% increase from its 2023 funding — through donor-advised vehicles whose original donors remain undisclosed.

The funding network behind domestic security model legislation has been documented through IRS Form 990 filings and published investigative research. The Center for American Progress documented that seven conservative foundations distributed $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 to a network of policy organizations that produced anti-Sharia legislation. Between 2017 and 2019, 35 charitable institutions distributed $105.8 million to 26 organizations in the same network. Total documented funding: $206 million. Actual funding was almost certainly higher.

Defense Contractor Money and Security Policy Research

The presence of defense contractor funding in domestic security policy research creates a conflict of interest that has received insufficient attention. Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics are not neutral observers of American security policy. They are among the largest beneficiaries of the government contracts that security policy decisions authorize. Their donations to policy organizations that influence security legislation are not charitable acts — they are strategic investments in the regulatory environment that determines their revenue.

The conflict is structural. A think tank that receives defense contractor funding has an incentive to produce research supporting expanded security operations and increased defense spending. The American public reading that think tank's congressional testimony has no way of knowing the "independent" expert has a funding relationship with the corporation that benefits from the recommended policy.

This is precisely what Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley identified in introducing the Think Tank Transparency Act — reintroduced in 2025 and 2026 without yet passing. The bill would require policy organizations to disclose major donors using the same Schedule B format corporations use for shareholders: if a think tank's research shapes American policy, the public deserves to know who funded it.

The Foreign Money Problem

Foreign government funding of American think tanks represents a distinct accountability failure. When a foreign government funds an organization shaping American national security policy, it acquires policy influence without the disclosure requirements that apply to registered foreign agents. FARA was designed to address this, but its application to think tanks has been inconsistent, and donor-advised funds provide a mechanism for routing foreign money through domestic intermediaries that obscures its origin.

The documented $2.5 million UAE transfer to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies illustrates the problem. FDD has been among the most influential foreign policy think tanks in Washington, providing congressional testimony on Iran sanctions, counterterrorism, and Middle East strategy. Its funding relationship with a Gulf state government — disclosed through investigative journalism, not voluntary transparency — raises questions that apply to every foreign policy think tank: who funds them, and does that funding shape their recommendations?

The Quincy Institute, which monitors think tank funding, has documented that organizations receiving foreign government or defense contractor funding consistently produce recommendations that benefit their funders — not evidence of individual corruption, but evidence of a structural incentive problem that transparency would at least make visible.

The "Copy-Paste" Signature

The most visible evidence of the pipeline is linguistic. When the Center for Public Integrity reviewed domestic security bills introduced across multiple states, it found identical or near-identical language in bills sponsored by different legislators — language that could only have originated from a common source. Legislators who introduce these bills typically have no awareness they are the fourth or fourteenth member of a coordinated campaign.

This is how the pipeline works at its most effective: the legislator is not co-opted, they are convenient. The organization provides research, expert witnesses, model language, constituent activation, and political framing. The legislator provides the title and the vote. The donor provides the money. The public provides no input — because the public doesn't know it is looking at a coordinated campaign rather than an organic legislative response.

The accountability failure is not the use of model legislation — legislators have always done this. The failure is that the sources and funders are systematically undisclosed, allowing policy organizations to shape law while shielding the financial interests driving the agenda.

The Bipartisan Case for Transparency

Think tank transparency is not a partisan issue. The same accountability standard that applies to conservative organizations shaping security policy should apply to progressive organizations shaping environmental policy. Americans deserve to know who is funding the institutions that shape their laws, regardless of ideological direction.

Senator Grassley, a Republican who has spent decades as a leading government accountability voice, has made think tank transparency a signature issue. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has expressed support for the transparency principle. The Quincy Institute has also advocated for funding disclosure after documenting defense contractor influence on foreign policy positions.

The Think Tank Transparency Act would not ban dark money donations, restrict policy research, or prevent model legislation. It would require only that policy organizations answer a single question every other institution seeking to influence American policy must answer: Who is funding you?

The bills your state legislature votes on were written somewhere. The question is whether you are allowed to know where — and who paid for them.

This investigation was prepared by the VALOR Institute Research Desk. Financial figures drawn from IRS Form 990 public filings, Center for American Progress research, Center for Public Integrity investigations, Quincy Institute Think Tank Funding Tracker, and Associated Press reporting. All figures represent public records. VALOR Institute analysis represents institutional editorial judgment and does not constitute legal advice.