A group of mostly Democratic-led states went to federal court Thursday, asking a judge to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from holding back disaster-related grant money unless states agree to make changes to how they run elections — changes favored by President Donald Trump’s administration.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Rhode Island by 25 states and the District of Columbia. It represents the latest legal clash over voting rules as November’s midterm elections approach, with control of Congress hanging in the balance for Trump’s party.
When announcing the restrictions on more than $1 billion in grant funding, DHS described the changes it was demanding as “common-sense steps to protect U.S. elections.” On July 10, DHS announced it would hold back 20% of Federal Emergency Management Agency grants — money intended to help states prepare for terrorist attacks and other threats — until states submit plans to use equipment that accepts hand-marked paper ballots instead of electronic voting systems that rely on bar codes and QR codes to tally votes.
DHS also said states would need to manually audit at least 5% of ballots cast, reconcile the number of voters who participated in each federal election with the total votes counted, and cross-check their voter registration rolls against a DHS database to verify that no non-U.S. citizens are improperly registered.
The states leading the lawsuit — Rhode Island, California, Illinois, and New Jersey — argued that conditioning the funds on election-related changes goes beyond what the federal government is legally allowed to do. The U.S. Constitution grants states the authority to administer federal elections.
“Congress never gave DHS or FEMA authority to rewrite state election law,” the lawsuit complaint stated.
The states said they were allocated more than $740 million for fiscal year 2026, meaning at least $148 million could be withheld under the policy being challenged. The grant programs in question have been in place for years and were never created with election security as their purpose, the lawsuit noted.
DHS and FEMA did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly made claims — found to be false — about widespread voting fraud in U.S. elections, including the 2020 presidential race that Trump lost. Democrats and voting rights advocates contend that Trump is working to erode public trust in election administration and set the stage for disputing midterm results if Republicans lose control of either chamber of Congress.
The administration has maintained that states are not doing enough to stop voter fraud and voting by non-U.S. citizens, and has pushed to expand federal oversight of elections.
Separately, the Democratic governor of New Jersey revealed Tuesday that more than 6,000 non-U.S. citizens were accidentally added to the state’s voter rolls and that nearly 400 of them cast ballots. The Justice Department has since demanded data on those voters.
Independent research and audits have consistently found voter fraud to be rare. A Reuters analysis of federal court records, published Sunday, found that many criminal cases involving non-U.S. citizen voting were the result of confusion, miscommunication with election officials, or administrative mistakes — undercutting Trump’s claims of a coordinated conspiracy.
