DOGE Officials' ChatGPT Process for Cutting DEI Grants Exposed in Deposition
Ten hours of newly released video testimony from January has uncovered how two officials from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) relied on ChatGPT and their own largely uninformed judgments to make sweeping decisions about grant funding at the National Endowment for the Humanities. The depositions, stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Modern Language Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Historical Association, reveal a haphazard process that eliminated tens of millions of dollars in public funding within less than a month.
Unqualified Agents Making Radical Cuts
Elon Musk's disciples in his so-called Department of Government Efficiency were embedded across federal agencies with a mandate to fire thousands of public employees and radically cut federal spending. When Musk deployed DOGE into the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provides vital financial support to research and arts programs, Musk's staff abruptly choked off more than 1,400 grants, eliminating critical funding for numerous programs and projects.
The depositions included testimony from two young DOGE officials, Justin Fox and Nathan Cavanaugh, neither of whom had experience working in government, let alone grant administration. Evidence in the case exposes DOGE's "haphazard and unlawful actions" from "unqualified agents" who "undermined the separation of powers and denied the American people access to vital public programming and research," according to Modern Language Association executive director Paula M. Krebs.
ChatGPT as Decision-Making Tool
During his hours-long deposition, Fox admitted to using ChatGPT to sift through grants before DOGE started slashing funding. They used a specific prompt: "Does the following relate at all to DEI?" followed by instructions to "Respond factually in less than 120 characters" and begin with 'Yes.' or 'No.' followed by a brief explanation.
That prompt—included in a vast tranche of discovery materials in the lawsuit, along with emails, spreadsheets and text messages—was the "intermediary step" before DOGE scanned through the results, Fox said in his deposition. When he reviewed a grant for a documentary about Black civil rights, he agreed that the project violated Trump's executive order on DEI because it "focused on a singular race."
"It is not for the benefit of humankind," said Fox, who was an associate at a private equity firm before joining DOGE. "It is focused on this specific group, or a specific race, here being Black," he said.
Struggling to Define DEI Principles
When pressed by attorneys about what DEI actually represents, Fox struggled to provide coherent answers. In a painful, minutes-long exchange during his deposition, full of pregnant pauses and heavy sighs, Fox said his "understanding" of DEI was based on Trump's executive order targeting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the government. But "I can't remember" what was in it, he admitted.
Asked why a documentary about Jewish women's slave labor during the Holocaust would be considered "DEI," Fox said: "It's the gender-based story that's inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group." And when questioned what he meant by "inherently discriminatory," he replied: "It's focusing on DEI principles. Gender being one of them."
No Expert Consultation or Research
When it came to deciding which grants they were culling, the DOGE officials didn't turn to field experts or consult with anyone who had relevant experience. Nobody asked the DOGE team to use ChatGPT, but they appeared to have relied heavily on the AI-generated results.
Cavanaugh admitted he does not have any experience in the scholarly or peer review process. "I think a person can have enough judgment from reading books and being well-informed outside of traditional experience to make judgment calls about obvious things like a grant that literally lists DEI in its description," Cavanaugh said in his deposition.
When attorneys asked which books informed those judgments, Cavanaugh revealed he hadn't consulted any. "There were no books," he said simply.
Subjective Judgments and Keyword Targeting
Fox compiled what he thought were the "craziest" and "other bad" grants, turning to three dozen keywords including "LGBTQ," "BIPOC," "Tribal," "ethnicity," "gender," "equality," "immigration," "citizenship" and "melting pot." More than two dozen grants deemed the "craziest" were related to LGBT+ projects.
In the deposition, Fox said the list reflected his "subjective" judgment. "'Crazy' is one way of saying it," he said. "'Most incriminating' is another way."
One of the "craziest" grants Cavanaugh reviewed concerned a book that explored the legacy of HIV and AIDS activism and prison abolition. "It references feminist and queer insights into prison abolition and LGBTQ studies," he said. Another proposal for a public series called "Examining experiences of LGBTQ military service" aimed to discuss the experiences of marginalized U.S. service members. Asked why the project was flagged for termination, Cavanaugh said "Because it explicitly says LGBTQ."
Six-Figure Salaries and No Remorse
Fox said he earned $150,000 for his work with DOGE, and Cavanaugh received $120,000. When asked if he felt any remorse for the grantees affected by their decisions, Fox responded: "Sorry for those impacted, but there is a bigger problem, and that's ultimately—the more important piece is reducing the government spend."
He said the cuts were a "necessary step in the right direction" and claimed that "growth in government spending leads to a debt spiral, leads to hyperinflation, leads to every American feeling 10, 12 percent inflation."
Asked by attorneys if he experienced any regret that people may have lost income because of their actions, Cavanaugh cut off the question before it was finished. "No," he said in his deposition. "I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero." He then admitted they didn't come close to achieving that goal.
Limited Impact Despite Radical Cuts
DOGE, which is baked into federal agencies, made 29,000 cuts to the government last year. But federal spending didn't go down under DOGE's watch—it did the opposite. The bulk of DOGE's work, including devastating cuts to foreign aid recipients, ultimately amounted to very little within the scope of overall government spending.
The only grants the DOGE officials didn't touch involved events surrounding America's 250th anniversary and the "National Garden of Heroes"—two Donald Trump priorities that remained untouched despite the sweeping cuts elsewhere in the humanities budget.
