Biden-Appointed Canadian-born Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Tying FEMA Anti-Terrorism Grants to Election Security Requirements

A radical Biden-appointed federal judge in Washington, D.C. just sided with Democrat-run cities and counties and struck down President Trump’s effort to tie a slice of federal counterterrorism money to basic election security.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, ruled that the Federal Emergency Management Agency exceeded the authority Congress granted it when FEMA attempted to condition Homeland Security Grant Program money on changes to election administration.

Ali ruled Monday that FEMA cannot withhold 20 percent of Homeland Security Grant Program funds until states and high-risk urban areas take steps to verify voter citizenship, check the citizenship of poll workers, move toward hand-marked paper ballots, run a 5 percent post-election manual audit, and reconcile voters with ballots cast.

Ali vacated those election-administration conditions and the 20 percent holdback. He denied a permanent injunction and left the rest of the grant notice in place, including a separate requirement that recipients spend at least 3 percent of the award on physical and cyber election security.

The plaintiffs are local governments in Texas, Tennessee and Ohio, including Nashville and Davidson County, Harris County (Houston), Dallas County, Travis County (Austin) and Columbus. They sued after FEMA issued the 2026 Notice of Funding Opportunity in June. Awards were slated to go out by September 30.

According to Reuters, the decision is another courtroom setback for the administration’s push to harden elections ahead of the November 3 midterms.

The Washington Post framed it the same way: the White House wanted to limit counterterrorism funding for jurisdictions that refused to check citizenship status on the voter rolls.

The Gateway Pundit reported last month that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was moving to require random post-election paper-ballot audits and other safeguards as a condition of full Homeland Security Grant Program awards.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Mullin warned that voting machines with foreign-made components create “significant security risks” and declared that “election security is national security.”

Those conditions were not invented out of thin air. The 2026 NOFO required:

• A plan to transition off barcode/QR-code voting systems to equipment that accepts hand-marked paper ballots
• Proof of a 5 percent post-election manual audit
• Reconciliation of voters who voted with ballots cast
• Use of DHS’s SAVE system to check citizenship on the entire state voter registration database within 120 days, with removal of verified non-citizens consistent with law
• Citizenship verification for poll workers, election-system operators and vendors

FEMA said it would hold back 20 percent of a state’s grant,  hundreds of millions of dollars nationwide, until proof of compliance. The underlying program still runs about $1 billion a year to help state and local governments prevent, prepare for and respond to acts of terrorism.

Judge Ali, a Biden nominee confirmed 50-49 in November 2024, said Congress never gave FEMA authority to extract those reforms at state and local expense.

He wrote that the statute lets FEMA fund projects proposed by states and high-risk urban areas, not withhold counterterrorism money until they change “routine aspects of election administration.” He also said the conditions were not reasonably related to preparing for or responding to acts of terrorism.

That is the legal wrapping. The political reality is simpler: Democrat-controlled cities do not want to be forced to clean voter rolls with the federal SAVE system, verify who is working the polls, or move off machines that tabulate barcodes instead of the voter’s actual marks.

DHS has already designated election systems as critical infrastructure. Foreign adversaries target those systems. Non-citizen voting is illegal. Poll workers who are not U.S. citizens operating election equipment is an obvious vulnerability. Hand-marked paper and a real audit are how you check the machines. The judge treated all of that as “routine election administration” outside the counterterrorism statute.

This is the same Judge Amir Ali The Gateway Pundit has covered before. He is the former president and executive director of the left-wing MacArthur Justice Center. He was confirmed on a near party-line vote after Republicans raised his group’s record on police and BLM-related advocacy.

In 2025 he blocked Trump administration efforts to freeze USAID spending and ordered the government to keep paying foreign-aid contractors. The Gateway Pundit reported that Ali had donated to Democrats, including Joe Biden, and had previously accused Trump of “animus” and “hatred towards Muslim people.”

GOP Rep. Andy Ogles even drafted articles of impeachment after Ali’s USAID orders.

Canadian-born, Harvard Law, Biden’s last-minute D.C. appointment, and now he is telling the Trump administration it cannot use homeland-security grant leverage to require citizenship checks on voter rolls and poll workers.