{"id":1008671,"date":"2026-08-18T13:22:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T13:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1008671\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T13:22:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T13:22:19","slug":"harris-county-sues-trump-over-threats-to-local-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1008671\/","title":{"rendered":"Harris County Sues Trump Over Threats to Local Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harris County filed suit against the Trump administration Monday over what it says is an attempt to use public safety grants as leverage to hijack local elections, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/files.constantcontact.com\/50cc5a01901\/a1583bc5-1bee-4fdf-b095-f7c46f447501.pdf?rdr=true\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">court documents<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The plaintiffs claim that local governments are being forced to comply with illegal election conditions or risk losing tens of millions of dollars in crucial funding that, for years, has gone toward counterterrorism grants, natural disaster response and other emergencies.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the lawsuit, FEMA will hold 20 percent of every state\u2019s Homeland Security grant award hostage \u2014 representing more than $200 million nationwide \u2014 unless local governments meet the following conditions:\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Transition to using hand-marked ballots instead of electronic voting systems already used in many places\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Manually audit at least 5 percent of ballots, which would add significant new costs and be contrary to state law in some cases<\/li>\n<li>Use the error-prone Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system to verify the citizenship of every registered voter and election worker<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harris County; Columbus, Ohio; the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee; and the City of El Paso are being represented by California-based <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicrightsproject.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Public Rights Project<\/a> in the case against the federal government. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Toby Merrill, litigation director for the Public Rights Project, said in a statement that the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s new grant conditions would make elections more costly, more difficult to administer and less reliable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDHS is trying to use homeland security funding to dramatically reshape how local governments run elections,\u201d he said.<strong> <\/strong>\u201cThese new conditions would undermine the local control that has helped make our elections safe and secure for decades. We\u2019re proud to stand with cities and counties fighting to protect their communities from this harmful federal overreach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Attorneys with Protect Democracy, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and Jacobson Lawyers Group are also on the case, claiming that the grant conditions violate the Constitution and jeopardize public safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harris County Attorney Abbie Kamin said in a statement she expects this kind of federal overreach from the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis latest effort is part of a series of moves by the Trump Administration to interfere with local elections, including attempts to derail mail-in voting, that stand to disenfranchise voters,\u201d said the county attorney. Kamin recently joined a separate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpress.com\/news\/harris-county-joins-lawsuit-opposing-crackdown-on-mail-ballots\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">lawsuit<\/a> to halt Trump\u2019s efforts to have the U.S. Postal Service refuse delivery of mail ballots for voters who aren\u2019t on a list of approved American citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The latest effort is a partisan power grab that\u2019s improper and dangerous, Kamin added. \u201cOur democracy depends on local control over elections, and we must vigorously guard against any attempt to upend it,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At risk for the Houston region is a $584 million Urban Area Security Initiative to enhance regional preparedness and capabilities in designated high-threat, high-density areas. The funds are used for purchasing law enforcement equipment, sustaining terrorism education programming, and tracking chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kamin said Monday that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to set the terms of federal spending and provides states with the power to make rules for elections; therefore she asserts that the Trump administration has no legal authority to unilaterally force the election changes on Harris County. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harris County filed suit against the Trump administration Monday over what it says is an attempt to use&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1008672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[67367,69,90,30565,6386,12730,4345,379,403848,358,3187,3676],"class_list":["post-1008671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-abbie-kamin","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-fema","tag-harris-county","tag-homepage","tag-houston","tag-lawsuit","tag-public-safety-grants","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-u-s-department-of-homeland-security"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117116728056705192","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}