In their biggest threat yet to conservative media, Democrats on the Federal Election Commission are laying the groundwork to bar companies with even the tiniest foreign ownership from American politics, a move that could ban Fox, the Wall Street Journal and even the New York Times from covering political races or giving endorsements.

In a last-minute submission Wednesday, a top Democrat on the evenly split FEC proposed that the Thursday meeting of the commission begin the process to prohibit companies with foreign ownership as small as 5 percent “from funding expenditures, independent expenditures, or electioneering communications.”