Two weeks ago, Nye County approved a noncontroversial $1 million federal grant aimed at boosting public safety.

But buried in the award was language requiring the county to comply with swaths of President Donald Trump's policies, including all executive orders and presidential memoranda. It's at least the second such grant awarded to a local government in Nevada with these strings attached and marks a departure from previous grants by requiring the county to follow sweeping executive orders that typically only apply to federal agencies. 

The grant, which passed unanimously through a consent agenda, is aimed at adding security enhancements — such as surveillance cameras — in local parks and to county buildings. Among the 44 conditions in the grant, one prohibits the county from restricting communication regarding an individual's citizenship status with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or other federal entities. 

It also prohibits the country from operating any so-called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" programs.

The money comes from the Department of Justice's longstanding Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which has historically been one of the largest funding pools for local law enforcement. But under the Trump administration, the program has required new conditions that align with the president's priorities. 

Local officials in deep-red Nye County have raised few concerns about those grant conditions. Instead, they say the grant provides much needed funding to the county, which is grappling with a multi-million dollar budget shortfall and has experienced high-profile incidents in public spaces — most notably a fatal shooting last year at a movie night in Pahrump park.

"Nye County has a tight budget, so any kind of grant funding that the county can get to help our sheriff's department and public safety, we desperately, desperately need," Assm. Gregory Hafen (R-Pahrump) told The Indy in an interview.

Nye County Commissioner Ian Bayne echoed Hafen, saying he didn't have any concerns about the grant and believed either the grant manager for the sheriff's office or the county likely applied for the grant. 

"Grants often come with conditions," Bayne said in an email. "It's their money so not much we can do."

Neither the Nye County's Sheriff's Office nor the county responded to a request asking about any potential concerns arising from the grant conditions or about the decision to apply. 

The extent of how the conditions will affect Nye County are still unclear, but similar conditions have prompted legal challenges from several Democratic-led municipalities, including Chicago, St. Paul, Minnesota and Santa Monica, California, which sued the Department of Justice in November 2025. They've contended that the requirements violate the Constitution by allowing the executive branch to impose conditions on federal spending that Congress did not authorize.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who requested the grant funding through a congressional appropriations bill, said the administration's approach to federal funding was unacceptable but that it shouldn't prevent Nevada communities from receiving needed resources.

Her office requested the funds before an executive order went into effect in 2025 that prohibited discretionary grants from supporting "racial preferences" or undocumented immigrants.

"The politicization of the federal funding process is unacceptable," Cortez Masto said in a statement. "But that doesn't mean Nevadans have to suffer in the meantime."

Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev), who also requested the funds, echoed Masto and said that federal funding is not meant to "advance one party's agenda." Nye County sits within Horsford's congressional district.

Nye County isn't the only Nevada jurisdiction accepting federal money under the new requirements. Douglas County, another conservative area, approved a COPS grant with similar requirements earlier this year and is scheduled to consider another $400,000 award at an upcoming meeting. 

"A huge administrative burden"

Hans Menos, who works on public safety initiatives with the left-leaning nonprofit Vera Institute, said following all executive orders could prove to be "a huge administrative burden" for individual municipalities. 

Menos said that federal grants typically align with the "shapes and values" of a given administration, but under Trump, those terms have been increasingly politicized as they've been tied to his immigration crackdown.

The grant's immigration-related condition specifically cites a federal statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1373, which generally prohibits state and local governments from restricting officials from sharing information about an individual's citizenship or immigration status with federal immigration authorities.

That statute, however, does not require state and local jurisdictions to proactively engage in immigration enforcement, such as detaining someone on behalf of federal immigration officials or collecting information regarding citizenship or immigration status. 

But Trump has repeatedly cited that statute to come after so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, claiming that local officials violate that statute by refusing to fulfill U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers or asking about someone's immigration status.

"It's the law of the land," Hafen said. "Whatever the federal standards are, you have to follow them."