CARSON CITY, Nev. (KOLO) – On Thursday, July 23, Attorney General Aaron Ford filed a lawsuit to stop the Trump administration’s continued efforts to use billions of dollars in federal counterterrorism and other funds to, in his words, coerce states into complying with the Trump administration’s political and policy priorities.
“Playing political games with funding to prevent counterterrorism and respond to disasters is the same as playing political games with the lives of Nevadans,” Ford said. ”The president has no problem putting Nevadans in danger if the state does not comply with his illegal actions.”
Ford filed the lawsuit with a coalition of 25 other attorneys general to challenge decisions by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to impose unlawful conditions on billions of dollars in federal funds that Congress appropriated for states to use in preparing for and responding to emergencies and natural disasters, including acts of terrorism, according to an Office of the Attorney General’s news release.
Ford said these conditions were found unlawful by a court in 2025.
It would require states to change the way they conduct elections, including by transmitting lists of all registered voters to Homeland Security, and to assist in enforcing federal immigration law.
They would also permit Homeland Security to terminate any federal grant at any time for any reason, according to the attorney general’s news release.
Despite the 2025 ruling against the Trump administration, the president is again attempting to overstep his legal authority, Ford said.
“I will not allow him to blackmail our state,” Ford said. “As the Trump administration continues its attempts to overreach its authority and impose illegal conditions on federal funding, I will continue to meet him, and beat him, in court.”
According to the release, Ford joined two similar and successful lawsuits in 2025 challenging the agency’s efforts to condition billions in federal emergency funding on states’ agreement to enforce federal immigration law and Homeland Security’s subsequent attempt to unlawfully reallocate its funding away from jurisdictions it viewed as insufficiently supportive of Trump’s political agenda.
Now, Homeland Security and FEMA have established grant conditions for 2026 funding that again attempt to coerce the states into complying with the administration’s policy priorities, Ford said.
The conditions affect billions of dollars in funding, including more than a billion dollars in Homeland Security Grant Program funding that states use to support security measures and protect residents from terrorism, cyberattacks, among other things.
Nevada has been allocated $4,362,750 for fiscal year 2026 for state and municipal efforts to prevent, prepare for and respond to acts of terrorism.
First, Homeland Security and FEMA have again threatened to impose the same immigration conditions that they attempted to impose in 2025 on all federal grant programs, Ford said.
According to the release, the conditions would require states to devote scarce law-enforcement resources to assisting Homeland Security in enforcing federal immigration law.
Ford said these conditions were found to be unlawful and were enjoined by a district judge last year.
Second, Homeland Security and FEMA threaten to withhold 20% of each state’s counterterrorism funding if states do not change state election law to conform to the administration’s policy goals, Ford said.
The attorneys general assert that these requirements would force states to abandon years of work and millions of dollars of investments in their election systems to obtain unrelated funding that Congress earmarked for the prevention of terrorist attacks.
Ford explained that the challenged funding conditions would require states to transition to paper-ballot systems; conduct a mandatory 5% manual audit of voting systems; reconcile voters and ballots using a methodology Homeland Security has not disclosed; and use the agency’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system to verify the citizenship of every election worker and every registered voter in states’ voter databases.
If states do not comply, Homeland Security and FEMA will withhold at least 20% of each state’s grant program funding, Ford said.
Finally, the challenged funding conditions unlawfully claim effectively unfettered power to terminate these Homeland Security grants on a whim, according to the release.
The agencies are attempting to add a condition to allow FEMA to terminate any grant program for any reason, Ford said.
This constant threat of termination undermines the stability and reliability that these critical programs rely on to be effective, according to the release.
The attorneys general argue that the grant conditions violate the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution’s Spending Clause.
Joining Ford in filing the lawsuit are attorneys general of California, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
Copyright 2026 KOLO. All rights reserved.
