US judge blocks Trump bid to tie terror grants to election rules

A US judge has blocked the Trump administration from tying FEMA counterterrorism grants to state election rules. The ruling reinforces limits on federal agencies and adds to setbacks over election oversight.

In Short

• Judge Amir Ali said Congress never authorised FEMA to impose election conditions
• The disputed programme allocates over USD one billion for counterterror preparedness
• Requirements included voter citizenship checks, audits and paper ballot transition plans

A federal judge in the United States on Monday blocked President Donald Trump's administration from withholding some federal counterterrorism funding from states that do not meet its election administration demands.

In a 24-page opinion, US District Judge Amir Ali in Washington, DC, said federal agencies did not have authority from Congress to attach such conditions to the grants. He also said the conditions did not meet the legal requirement that they be related to the purpose of the grants.

The case was brought by Columbus, Ohio; Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee; and El Paso and Harris counties in Texas. Over the summer, a FEMA anti-terrorism grant announcement said 20 per cent of grants for states and urban areas would be withheld until they complied with a list of election-related requirements.

The programme includes more than USD 1 billion for states and local and tribal governments for measures aimed at preventing terror at crowded places, online, with border security and around elections. FEMA expects to award 56 grants. The list of conditions included verifying the citizenship of all registered voters and election workers. Places using electronic voting systems with barcodes or QR codes to count votes would also have had to submit plans to switch to hand-marked paper ballots. Every jurisdiction would have had to show that it audits results.

In the lawsuit, the cities and counties said FEMA had no authority to impose those conditions, "not under its governing statute and not under the Constitution". They said Congress had authorised FEMA to help jurisdictions protect critical infrastructure from terrorism and cyberattacks, not to decide who can vote, how ballots must be counted or how states maintain voter rolls. "Never before has FEMA purported to regulate how states and counties run elections," they said. Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor FEMA immediately responded to a request for comment.

The grant conditions were the latest step by Trump's administration to shape how elections are run, a role long handled by states. Courts have largely rejected the administration's earlier efforts linked to claims of widespread voting fraud, and Judge Ali's order is the latest setback to that push.

With PTI Inputs

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