Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is joining several Senate colleagues in asking the U-S Department of Education to determine how much money adversarial foreign governments are donating to American schools, including some in Iowa.

Espionage by foreign actors is a “constant threat,” according to Grassley, which can take on various forms, including trying to inject propaganda into our schools.

Grassley, a Republican, says there’s also evidence the Chinese have pumped money into the University of Iowa through what’s called the Confucius Institute.

He says the U-S must “thwart efforts by authoritarian regimes to peddle propaganda in our schools” as well as other threats to national security. Iowa’s other U-S Senator Joni Ernst is among the 18 senators who signed the letter requesting the nationwide audit.