Throughout his second term, Donald Trump has attempted to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding to coerce states into enacting his policy goals, a practice challenged in hundreds of lawsuits.
On Monday, a coalition of cities and counties in three states defeated what they described as Trump’s attempt to hold $200 million in federal counterterrorism grants “hostage” unless they administer elections the way he prefers.
“Congress did not authorize the grant program to be used for the sort of election administration reforms FEMA demands here — changes that, whether sound or not as a matter of policy, are not advanced to prepare for or respond to ‘acts of terrorism,’” U.S. District Judge Amir Ali wrote in a 24-page opinion. “The statute governing the grant programs at issue authorizes FEMA to administer the program to assist states and high-risk urban areas ‘in preventing, preparing for, protecting against, and responding to acts of terrorism.’”
The coalition, which includes cities and counties in Ohio, Texas, and Tennessee, sued over restrictions to FEMA’s Homeland Security Grant Program that would have withheld 20 percent of the grants for jurisdictions that refused to carry out a MAGA wish-list for election reforms.
Congress established the program after the 9/11 attacks to aid state and local governments in “preventing, preparing for, protecting against, and responding to acts of terrorism.”
Under Trump, FEMA had other objectives: Participating states, cities and counties receiving federal money would have had to use the government’s error-prone SAVE database to screen whether registered voters are citizens. Those granted awards also would have been forced to conduct post-election manual audits and replace ballots with barcodes and QR codes for automated counting with hand-marked paper ballots, changes that election experts warned would make vote-counting slower, less accurate and more expensive.
Harris County Attorney Abbie Kamin, who represents one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, celebrated the decision as a victory over “blatant federal overreach that jeopardized public safety.”
“The court agreed that holding public safety funding hostage to force the president’s agenda is dangerous and illegal,” Kamin said in a statement. “Under our laws, states and localities control our elections, and today’s ruling reaffirms that.”
This past March, The New York Times reported that more than 198 lawsuits have been filed over the Trump administration’s efforts to force states to carry out his preferred policies, and federal judges have repeatedly rebuked him for trying to unconstitutionally usurp Congress’s power of the purse. Many of those efforts involved restrictions on housing, transit, health and public safety to pressure states to abandon sanctuary jurisdiction policies on immigration, and those attempts overwhelmingly have failed in court.
In August, a federal judge blocked Trump’s effort to tie emergency disaster relief in Oregon to opposing “gender ideology,” a phrase the government didn’t define.
Read the latest ruling in full here.
Birthright citizenship defenders hold the line
Earlier this month, a federal judge made clear that Trump’s second executive order restricting birthright citizenship is no more constitutional than his first.
“The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth,’” U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman wrote on Sept. 2.
Days later, the Trump administration appealed that ruling and immediately moved to dissolve the judge’s injunction. The Trump Justice Department’s motion remains pending.
Immigration groups aren’t simply waiting on the sidelines for a ruling, filing a separate lawsuit seeking to block Trump’s second birthright citizenship order to reinforce the original injunction.
“The Constitution is clear, and the Supreme Court has been clear: Birthright citizenship is the law of the land,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Cody Wofsy, who helped lead the first effort to block Trump’s birthright citizenship ban, said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s newest attack on this fundamental American principle is just as cruel and illegal as its previous executive order, and it will meet the same fate in court.”
The lead plaintiff in the new lawsuit, known only by the pseudonym “Nathan,” is a baby born after the previous Supreme Court ruling and after Trump’s revised executive order purported to block the children of parents employed by “international organizations” from having birthright citizenship.
In addition to the ACLU, the coalition of civil rights groups behind the latest lawsuit includes the NAACP, Democracy Defenders Fund, and the Asian Law Caucus.
Read the complaint in full here.