FEMA conditioned disaster preparedness grants on states adopting paper ballots, auditing voting systems, and cooperating with immigration enforcement

On June 24, 2026, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security adopted new conditions on emergency preparedness and counterterrorism grants that states use to fund first responders, protect schools and houses of worship, and strengthen cybersecurity. Under the revised terms, states seeking access to those funds would be required to transition to paper-ballot voting systems, manually audit 5% of voting systems, and use DHS's Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements system to verify the citizenship of poll workers and registered voters. DHS would additionally have the authority to withhold 20% of counterterrorism funding from states that did not enact the demanded election changes, and to revoke any grant without cause.

Updates

2026-07-23 — Coalition of 26 states filed suit in Rhode Island federal court challenging grant conditions [1, 2, 3]

A coalition of 26 states filed suit in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, naming as defendants FEMA, its administrator Robert J. Fenton, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. Attorneys general from Rhode Island, New Jersey, California, and Illinois co-led the action, joined by Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. The complaint argued that conditioning congressionally-appropriated public safety funds on unrelated election and immigration demands violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the spending clause of the Constitution. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha called the action "FEMA 3.0," noting that federal courts had issued permanent injunctions twice in the prior year blocking similar conditions as unconstitutional "economic dragooning." FEMA dismissed the suit as "partisan pushback."

2026-08-17 — Four local governments in Ohio, Tennessee and Texas sued DHS over the conditions [4, 5, 6]

Harris County and El Paso County in Texas, the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County in Tennessee, and the City of Columbus, Ohio filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security in federal court, represented by Protect Democracy, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Public Rights Project and the Jacobson Lawyers Group. The complaint argued that the conditions are arbitrary and unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act and that they intrude on authority the Constitution assigns to the states and Congress, stating that Congress "authorized FEMA to help jurisdictions protect critical infrastructure from terrorist and cyberattacks" and "did not authorize FEMA to decide who may vote, how ballots must be counted, or how states maintain their voter rolls." The plaintiffs described concrete costs: Columbus stood to forfeit more than $700,000 of a roughly $3.6 million allocation, El Paso County estimated that new ballot printers alone would cost $3 million, and Harris County said compliance would conflict with a Texas law requiring ballot counting to conclude within 24 hours. The complaint also cited DHS's own acknowledgment, in an unrelated agreement with California, of an estimated 5 to 10 percent error rate in the SAVE database the conditions require jurisdictions to use. A FEMA spokesperson responded in writing that "election security is national security" and that the agency "fully expected opposition to common-sense measures designed to protect election security."