Lost & Found

Since President Trump returned to office last year, his administration has canceled, frozen, delayed, or otherwise disrupted billions of dollars in federal grants.

Those disruptions have real consequences for everyday Americans in every state. That’s why States United and Grant Witness this week launched Lost Funds, a tool documenting where and how the impacts of those disruptions are being felt.

Our research found that the administration has disrupted $177 billion. That includes more than $29 billion in disaster relief aid, more than $36 billion in food and nutrition assistance, and more than $58 billion in health-related funding. We also found that by fighting back in court, state officials from 27 states have restored $35 billion and are actively challenging another $32 billion in disrupted funding.

“Congress approved this funding, and the Trump administration does not have unilateral authority to simply override those decisions and withhold money from the communities it was meant to serve,” States United Research Director Kelly Rader said in a statement. “Lost Funds shows the extraordinary scale and real human impact of these disruptions, and how states are once again on the front lines protecting their residents.”

You can view all of the data, including which funding has been impacted in your state, at LostFunds.org.

This Week in Democracy

The Supreme Court rejects Trump’s proposed restrictions on mail ballots
The Supreme Court denied the Trump administration’s request to lift a federal judge’s order blocking the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new restrictions on mail ballots for this year’s elections. A majority of justices found that the restrictions—which stemmed from Trump’s second election-focused executive order—were likely unlawful. The chief of the Postal Service confirmed to The Associated Press that work to implement the restrictions had stopped.

Officials from 24 states and the District of Columbia brought the lawsuit against the restrictions. The chief election officials of seven additional states, among a group of over three dozen current and former officials, also filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the restrictions.

➡️ MORE: Sharing the Facts About Trump’s Second Executive Order on Elections

Federal investigators may have broken the law while investigating voter rolls
A whistleblower said that federal agents may be violating multiple states’ laws by misrepresenting themselves while combing through state voter registration lists as part of an investigation to find noncitizens registered to vote. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the Department of Homeland Security reassigned agents from investigations into serious crimes to the voter roll investigations, despite a continued lack of evidence of widespread noncitizen voting.

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to confirm whether federal agents were posing as Virginia voters as part of their investigation. In Virginia and other states, individuals using state voter lookup tools must attest that they are looking up their own information.

➡️ MORE: What’s Breaking Through About False Claims of Noncitizen Voting

DOJ is continuing to pursue politically motivated prosecutions
The Justice Department argued to an appeals court that its prosecutions of New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey were wrongly dismissed and asked the panel of judges to revive the cases. The charges against Comey and James—brought at Trump’s direction—were dismissed in November after a federal judge ruled that the prosecutor who led them was unlawfully appointed to her role.

The Justice Department also subpoenaed former CIA Director John Brennan, another outspoken critic of Trump, to testify as part of its wide-ranging investigation into former federal officials who investigated or prosecuted the president.

➡️ MORE: How Politicized Prosecutions Undermine the Rule of Law

State of the States

In Minnesota, an ICE agent facing state and federal charges made his first appearance in state court.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty filed state charges in May against the officer, Christian Castro, alleging that he shot into a house during immigration enforcement operations, injuring a man inside, and later lied about the incident. A federal grand jury also indicted Castro earlier this month for lying to investigators about the events leading up to the shooting.

Castro was initially arrested in Texas after Moriarty filed charges. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sent a request to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to extradite Castro, but Abbott refused and Castro was released. After he was indicted on federal charges, Castro turned himself in to federal authorities and traveled to Minnesota under an agreement with Minnesota law enforcement.

In Texas, Secretary of State Robert Howden announced that more than 500 voters flagged by a federal program as potential noncitizens had, in fact, already provided proof of their U.S. citizenship to state agencies—a 21% error rate.

The secretary’s office said in October that it ran the information of more than 18 million voters through the federal program. The program flagged about 2,700 people—0.00015%—as potential noncitizens. State and county officials investigated and found just 117 cases—0.0000065%—of potential noncitizen voting, which they referred to the state attorney general.

The federal program—called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE)—was originally designed to verify the citizenship status of people applying for benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, but the Trump administration overhauled it last year to be used to check voters’ citizenship. The program has proven to be unreliable; in some cases, its use has resulted in Americans being deregistered to vote.

Citing concerns about voters’ privacy and potential disenfranchisement, a federal judge blocked the administration in June from continuing to use SAVE for election purposes. The administration asked the Supreme Court earlier this month to pause that order.

➡️ MORE: About the SAVE program

In Vermont, a federal judge threw out the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas seeking Vermont voters’ private data, the 24th such case to be dismissed. The Justice Department brought 31 lawsuits in total seeking voter data from states across the country; it has yet to win any of them.

➡️ MORE: Sharing the Facts About Federal Efforts to Compile State Voter Data