Queen Creek, Arizona — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on July 24 joined a coalition of 26 states suing the federal government over new strings attached to homeland-security grant money. The complaint targets rules that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security set for 2026 grants, which the states contend tie emergency-preparedness dollars to unrelated policy demands.
According to the attorney general's office, the disputed rules would obligate states to assist with federal immigration enforcement and to overhaul how they run elections, including sending DHS full voter rolls, switching to paper-ballot voting, hand-auditing 5 percent of voting systems, and running every registered voter and election worker through a federal citizenship database. States that decline would forfeit at least a fifth of their Homeland Security Grant Program allocation, the office said.
The suit also objects to a provision the states say would let FEMA cancel any grant whenever it chooses. The coalition alleges the 2026 rules violate the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution's Spending Clause. A federal judge blocked comparable immigration-related grant requirements last year, according to the announcement.
> "Congress appropriated these funds to help protect our communities from terrorism, cyberattacks, and natural disasters—not to give the federal government leverage to force states to adopt unrelated political agendas," said Attorney General Kris Mayes.
