Texas’ Harris and El Paso counties have joined Metro Nashville and Davidson County in Tennessee and the city of Columbus in Ohio in a suit against the Trump administration over new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rules they say improperly tie homeland‑security grants to election changes.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington, DC on August 17, challenges the administration’s attempt to link counterterrorism and emergency‑response dollars to election mandates that local officials say are burdensome, costly, and outside federal authority. The conditions include revising voter rolls using a federal database critics describe as unreliable and conducting post‑election audits based on guidelines that have not yet been issued. They would also require hand‑marked paper ballots, poll‑worker citizenship checks and other shifts.
The Houston area receives funding over $23 million through Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) funding, a $584 million national program supporting law‑enforcement equipment, terrorism‑prevention training and detection of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threats.
“Withholding dollars that protect our communities for a partisan power grab is not only improper, it’s dangerous,” Harris County Attorney Abbie Kamin said in a statement.
The idea of using the power of the purse as a cudgel is one many Texans have become all too familiar with. Gov. Greg Abbott has used funding threats the same way—pulling public safety grants to pressure Houston, Dallas and Austin to loosen limits on ICE cooperation, and targeting airport and city funding over rainbow crosswalks, a Muslim event at a Grand Prairie water park, and a planned Muslim prayer room at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
This suit takes a stand, fighting not only the funding demand itself, but whether Washington had the power to make the demand in the first place.
Kamin argues the Trump administration lacks the legal authority to impose election‑procedure requirements as a condition for receiving public‑safety grants.
“This is the kind of federal overreach we’ve come to expect from the Trump Administration threatening to withhold critical law enforcement and public safety funding, as well as counter-terrorism programs our public safety agencies rely on,” said Kamin.
El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez said the county joined the lawsuit to block DHS from tying public‑safety grants to sweeping election‑system changes, because.
“Holding critical grant funding hostage to advance a false political narrative is unlawful. It comes at the direct expense of local election offices, law enforcement agencies, and the communities they are entrusted to serve.”
El Paso County says the stakes include about $1.75 million in law‑enforcement funding and more than $170,000 for first‑responder equipment. Switching to hand‑marked paper ballots alone would cost around $3 million for printers, and the county would also be required to manually audit 5% of ballots and use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database—a little-known immigration status verification tool—to verify voter and worker citizenship requirements local officials call costly and error‑prone.
“Imposing additional requirements is both costly and burdensome, while our law enforcement agencies rely on this funding to purchase critical equipment that helps protect and save lives,” Sanchez said.
The full lawsuit is available here.
