FEMA Will Withhold 20% of a $1 Billion Anti-Terrorism Grant Program — Money for Cybersecurity and Protecting Crowded Public Spaces — Unless States Rewrite Their Elections to Trump's Demands Before the Midterms, a Power the Constitution Gives Him Zero Authority Over

The Homeland Security Grant Program exists because of September 11, 2001. It pays for the unglamorous machinery of preventing the next attack: cybersecurity, bomb-squad equipment, emergency planning, training, and physical protection for the crowded public spaces where terrorists strike — stadiums, transit hubs, parades. It is a $1.064 billion counterterrorism program.

The Trump administration has decided to hold one-fifth of it hostage — not to fight terrorism, but to force states to run their elections the way Trump wants, months before an election he is afraid of losing.

The mechanism

FEMA's fiscal-year 2026 grant notice contains the threat in plain bureaucratic language:

"For each state and UASI, FEMA will withhold from drawdown an amount equal to 20% of the recipient's total HSGP award (SHSP, UASI, and OPSG) until the recipient submits proof of compliance with the FY 2026 Election Security NPA requirements, and such proof is verified/confirmed by the Department."

Translation: comply with Trump's election demands, or lose 20% of your terrorism-prevention funding.

This is an escalation. For years, the grants carried a modest election component — states had to spend at least 3% on election security. In FY2025, FEMA held back just 3% pending proof of three modest election-related actions. FY2026 raises the hold to 20% and vastly expands what states must do. And FEMA made clear the two are stacked, not interchangeable:

"The 3% minimum allocation and the 20% holdback are separate requirements and do not offset one another. Meeting the 3% allocation does not, by itself, release the 20% holdback."

What states are being forced to do

To get their full counterterrorism money, states must:

• Abandon their voting machines. Submit "a plan for transitioning from electronic voting systems that utilize bar codes or QR codes to count votes to equipment that accepts hand-marked paper ballots" — including a timeline and, "if necessary, a funding request to eliminate ballot marking devices"
• Conduct 5% manual audits of ballots after every election, using methods set by the administration
• Reconcile the number of voters in federal elections against the number of ballots cast
• Run the entire voter roll through SAVE — the DHS "Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements" database — within 120 days of accepting the grant, to check every voter's citizenship
• Verify the citizenship of every poll worker, temporary worker, and vendor who operates election systems

The SAVE requirement is the most alarming. Critics note the database is flawed: it produces false matches and can wrongly flag eligible citizens for removal from the rolls. A federal judge already blocked DHS from using SAVE to purge voters, finding the administration had "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote." The DOJ has separately sued 30 states for declining to hand over their voter lists for a federal SAVE audit.

The cost — to security and to states

The switch to hand-marked paper ballots is not a memo; it is new tabulation machines and equipment across entire states, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger estimated the transition would cost $66 million for Georgia alone.

Meanwhile, the money being withheld is real security money. The grants flow largely to the populous, high-threat urban states:

• New York expects about $204 million in FY2026 — 20% of which is now frozen behind Trump's election demands
• California and Texas are similarly major recipients

The Urban Area Security Initiative — one of the withheld pots — was created after 9/11 specifically to protect cities from terrorist threats. The administration is now threatening to slow-walk that money unless New York City, Los Angeles, and other targets rewrite their voting systems. States must comply by November 1, 2026 — the eve of the midterms.

The Constitution says he can't

The president has no constitutional authority over how states run elections. The Elections Clause gives that power to state legislatures and to Congress — not the executive. Courts have said so, repeatedly and recently:

• A federal judge blocked major parts of Trump's anti-voting executive order, writing bluntly: "The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections."
• Another judge blocked the SAVE voter-purge effort over privacy violations
• Arizona and 18 other states are suing over the underlying executive order
• Last year, when the administration tried to withhold DHS money unless states submitted population counts tied to its deportation campaign, states sued and a court blocked it — the same grant-conditioning tactic, already ruled unlawful

David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who advises election officials, predicted the outcome: "I expect [the new requirements] will be blocked in the courts."

The reaction

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul: "After denying disaster relief funding and stripping millions from counterterrorism programs, the Trump administration is once again putting New Yorkers' lives at risk to forward their political agenda."

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows: "Trump is trying to meddle in how states run American elections because he's terrified of losing power after the 2026 midterms."

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read: "Yet another desperate, likely illegal attempt to seize control of our free, fair elections by a president who is afraid that the American people will hold him accountable."

UCLA law professor Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project: "Trump is trying to use whatever levers of power and persuasive power that he might have to try to interfere with how states and localities are going to conduct the 2026 election."

Robert Weiner of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law pointed to the fiction at the heart of the whole effort: noncitizen voting rates are "infinitesimally small." The justification — rampant fraud — does not exist. Study after study has found it vanishingly rare. The requirements are not a response to a problem; they are the pretext.

The pincer

The funding threat does not stand alone. It is one arm of a coordinated squeeze:

• The DOJ's Civil Rights Division sent letters to election officials in all 50 states and D.C., warning that administrators could face criminal charges if they knowingly permit noncitizens to vote or stay on the rolls — and giving states five days to submit compliance plans
• The DOJ announced it will send federal election monitors to 15 jurisdictions in six states during the 2026 primary season
• The SAVE lawsuits against 30 states demand their voter data outright

Money withheld on one side, criminal threats on the other, federal monitors in the middle. It is a campaign to make state election officials afraid — of losing security funding, of prosecution, of federal scrutiny — until they administer the 2026 election the way the president prefers.

What it is

The administration's only defense is procedural. A DHS spokesperson said: "No changes to grant requirements or funding distributions are official until they are formally announced and published through proper, authorized agency channels," adding that election security is "a core national security priority." But the requirements are in the published FY2026 grant notice, with a compliance deadline and a 20% penalty spelled out in black and white.

Strip away the language of "election security," and the structure is naked coercion: the federal government taking money appropriated to stop terrorism and dangling it over states to extract changes to elections the president has no lawful power to command. The people who lose if the money is withheld are not fraudulent voters — there almost are none. They are the cybersecurity teams, the emergency planners, and the officers guarding crowded public spaces in the country's largest cities.

A president afraid of an election is holding the nation's counterterrorism budget hostage to bend that election in his favor. There is a word for using something someone needs to force them to do what you want against their will, and it is the one the coverage reached for: blackmail.