A few months ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency approached state and local officials with a proposed deal of sorts: If they agreed to use a federal citizenship database, to abandon certain types of voting equipment and to impose other election restrictions in line with Donald Trump’s wishes, they would receive the counterterrorism grants to which they were entitled.
But, FEMA added, if state and local officials balked at the proposed election changes, the administration would withhold 20% of the anti-terrorism funding.
If you’re thinking that the pitch doesn’t seem legal, you have something in common with U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali. The Washington Post reported:
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Federal Emergency Management Agency from withholding anti-terrorism funds from local governments that don’t change how they run elections.
It marked the latest blow to the Trump administration’s attempts to rewrite election rules.
The lawsuit was brought by a group of local governments in Tennessee, Texas and Ohio.
Abbie Kamin, the county attorney for Harris County, Texas, one of the local governments that filed the lawsuit, said in a statement, “Today’s win is the result of cities and counties standing together against blatant federal overreach that jeopardized public safety.”
Time will tell whether the Trump administration bothers to appeal. But in the meantime, it’s hard not to notice just how many levers of government the White House has tried to pull in pursuit of a problem that does not exist in any meaningful way.
At last count, Trump and his team have tried to combat imaginary election fraud by using FEMA, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Service and even the Social Security Administration.
These efforts haven’t worked — none of these departments or agencies has advanced the president’s conspiracy theories or successfully imposed new voting restrictions — but the crusade is ongoing.
In the meantime, the administration could be strengthening agencies such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an agency the Trump White House helped create in his first term to help strengthen election systems — but the president and his operation have instead taken steps to gut CISA over the past year.
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