Judge Blocks Trump Bid to Tie Counterterrorism Grants to Election Changes

A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from withholding counterterrorism funding from states and localities that decline to adopt its election administration requirements, handing another legal setback to the White House's efforts to influence how elections are run.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, writing in a 24-page opinion from Washington, D.C., found that federal agencies had not received authority from Congress to attach such conditions to the grants. The requirements, he concluded, also failed the legal test that ties grant conditions to the underlying purpose of the funding.

The dispute centres on an antiterrorism grant announcement issued over the summer by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which included a list of election-related mandates. Under the terms, 20% of grants for states and urban areas would be held back until recipients complied.

The program distributes more than $1 billion to states as well as local and tribal governments for efforts aimed at preventing terrorism in crowded places, online, along borders and around elections. FEMA expects to award 56 grants.

Among the conditions, states would have to verify the citizenship of all registered voters and election workers. Jurisdictions using electronic voting systems that rely on barcodes or QR codes would need to submit plans to move to hand-marked paper ballots, and every jurisdiction would have to demonstrate that it audits results.

The lawsuit challenging the conditions was brought by Columbus, Ohio; Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee; and El Paso and Harris counties in Texas. The plaintiffs argued that FEMA had no authority to impose the requirements, "not under its governing statute and not under the Constitution."

Congress, they contended, authorised the agency to help jurisdictions protect critical infrastructure from terrorism and cyberattacks — not to determine who may vote, how ballots are counted or how states maintain their voter rolls. They noted that FEMA had never before sought to regulate the conduct of elections.

The court's ruling adds to a series of judicial rejections of the administration's election-related measures, which rest on claims of widespread voting fraud. The decision arrives ahead of November's midterm elections, in which Democrats are seeking to win control of one or both chambers of Congress.

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor FEMA immediately responded to requests for comment on the ruling.