The Department of Homeland Security was dragged into federal court this week after threatening to withhold $1 billion in anti-terrorism funding for several states if they don’t change election rules.
In Nashville vs. DHS, a bombshell federal lawsuit filed Monday by the Brennan Center and co-counsel on behalf of cities and counties challenging DHS’s demand warned that the Trump administration’s coercive move would not go down without a fight. The federal agency had pushed for “adopting a series of burdensome changes to their election procedures” for the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, Harris County, Texas, the City of Columbus, Ohio, and El Paso County, Texas.
“Over the last two years, courts have largely blocked the administration’s repeated attempts to take control of elections because states and Congress — not the executive branch — have the power to make election rules,” according to the Brennan Center. “Now, DHS is holding public safety hostage in order to coerce states into adopting some of the very policies that the administration has already tried and failed to impose.”
DHS has threatened to cut 20 percent of funding unless these states bow to a wish list of election overhauls. Those demands include ditching modern voting systems for paper ballots and running every voter through a citizenship-checking system, which a federal judge has already called unreliable.
“Each of these conditions creates impracticable burdens and timelines that will interfere with election administration and impede voter access,” the Brennan Center stated.
The lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration has tried to insert executive control over how America votes and that President Donald Trump “has no authority to set the terms of federal spending or create election rules.”
“Congress holds the exclusive power of the purse, and the Constitution balances election authority between Congress and the states,” according to the Brennan Center. “Plaintiffs also allege that because they are ambiguous and unrelated to addressing terrorism threats, the election conditions violate federalism and the Constitution’s Spending Clause. The lawsuit further claims that the conditions violate the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies must operate.”
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