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Four city and county governments, led by Nashville and the county where it’s located, sued the Trump administration Monday over election security-related mandates placed on grants to combat terrorism.
“FEMA has no authority to impose those conditions — not under its governing statute and not under the Constitution,” the suit argues. “Congress authorized FEMA to help jurisdictions protect critical infrastructure from terrorist and cyberattacks. It did not authorize FEMA to decide who may vote, how ballots must be counted, or how states maintain their voter rolls. Never before has FEMA purported to regulate how states and counties run elections. Such a transformative assertion of federal authority in an area of traditional state control requires clear congressional authorization that FEMA does not have. The power to administer elections belongs to the states, subject only to conditions imposed by Congress — not the President, not the Secretary of Homeland Security, and not FEMA.”
A group of cities and counties alleges the Trump administration is threatening to withhold anti-terrorism funding unless they adopt strict election rules.
The Texas counties of El Paso and Harris, as well as the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County and the City of Columbus, are suing the Department of Homeland Security, according to a news release from the Brennan Center for Justice, one of the organizations representing the group.
El Paso County and Harris County on Monday sued the Department of Homeland Security alongside communities in Tennessee and Ohio over new requirements for federal grants that they argue undermine election security and public safety.
“There’s a lot of guesswork that the public has to do, and frankly shouldn’t have to do, about exactly who is being moved and what work is now deemed ‘policy-influencing’ in the way that they’re using that phrase,” Jules Torti, counsel for Protect Democracy, said in an interview. “We’re hearing from civil servants that they don’t know their position description number, and many of them have not yet been told whether or not they’ve been moved. There is a lot of confusion about exactly what this means.”
The Antideficiency Act prevents agencies from spending federal funds before Congress has appropriated them or using more than what lawmakers allocated. The penalties for defying the act would also apply to not following the OMB’s recent guidance, according to Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for Protect Democracy, an advocacy organization that tracks apportionments.
“Schedule Policy/Career would take us back to a system where the government was run by political loyalists, not neutral professionals,” Ori Lev, special counsel at Protect Democracy, said in an emailed statement. “We will continue our work to protect civil servants who are meant to be free to do their jobs without fear of retaliation for their politics, work assignments, or whistleblowing.”
Cerin Lindgrensavage, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, a government watchdog, said there are still “absolutely places where, in response to Congress rejecting cuts, that O.M.B. has implemented those cuts unlawfully.”
Her organization has sued to force the release of detailed White House budget records, which the administration previously tried to keep secret. Still, Ms. Lindgrensavage said there was a “lot in common” between Mr. Trump’s past moves and his newly proposed grant rules, which could further “risk politicizing spending across the federal government.”
Alexandra Chandler, director of Free and Fair Elections at nonprofit Protect Democracy, noted that USPS and the federal government have no constitutional authority to regulate how states administer their elections, including micromanaging voter roll maintenance.
While the proposed regulation claims USPS will not overrule states on a voter’s eligibility to receive mail-in or absentee ballots, it’s also peppered with caveats and exceptions that could allow USPS to do just that if they determine it is part of their obligation to uphold federal laws or assist law enforcement investigations.
“It’s hard to argue any other single figure in the world has as much influence over our country’s discourse,” said Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and now a researcher at the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “The fact he continually uses it to normalize and encourage violence rather than discourage it is a choice he makes each day to make America less safe.”
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