Federal emergency grants meant to prepare cities for terror attacks can’t be used as leverage to change how states run elections, a federal judge ruled Monday. Judge Amir H. Ali of the US District Court in Washington, DC, blocked a Trump administration policy that threatened to cut up to 20% of certain FEMA antiterrorism funds unless states showed they were moving toward paper ballots or tightening citizenship verification for voters. Local governments in Tennessee, Texas, and Ohio sued FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, arguing the move exceeded federal authority and could block eligible voters, the New York Times reports.
Ali, a Biden appointee, agreed, saying the conditions went beyond the administration’s power over elections and ordered them removed from the grant application process. The FEMA grants, totaling about $1 billion annually, help cities bolster defenses, plan for terrorist incidents, and run drills. “Never before has FEMA purported to regulate how states and counties run elections,” the lawsuit said, per the AP. The policy had been aligned with President Trump’s repeated but widely discredited assertions of widespread voter fraud. Trump has had mixed success with a string of recent Supreme Court decisions on his efforts to assert more control over election rules ahead of the November midterms.