The Craziest Grants
The federal government used an AI chatbot to decide what American history was worth keeping.
The federal government used an AI chatbot to decide what American history was worth keeping.
The video is ninety-three minutes long. The thing you notice first is the smirk.
This week, video depositions from a lawsuit were released of two young men Elon Musk deployed to slash federal spending. DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the program Musk introduced to the country with a chainsaw, assumed operational control over grant review at the National Endowment for the Humanities in January 2025. The NEH had been funding American scholarship since 1965. Sixty years. Historians, archivists, Native language keepers, oral historians, community scholars. People who spent careers building something the country, through its Congress, through its appropriated funds, had formally decided was worth preserving.
Justin Fox arrived as part of the DOGE Small Agencies Team. No academic credentials. No humanities background. No legal authority. Fox, who had no apparent awareness that the record being made in that room would outlast the grants he had come to cancel, smirks while his attorney speaks. He checks his phone. He leans back, hand on his head. His boss Nate Cavanaugh, a political appointee in his late 20s, sighed heavily when questions became inconvenient and testified that a person could make sound judgments about obvious things by reading books. He had consulted none.
Asked to define DEI, the word he used to cancel roughly $100 million in grants, Fox said his understanding was exactly what was written in the executive order. Asked what the executive order said, he did not remember the details.
The lawyer questioning them is Yinka Onayemi. He is Black. In 2020, while getting his JD at Georgetown, he stood alone on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial holding a sign: “When does the/our American dream begin?” Now he is in a room with these men, asking them to account for what they did. Cavanaugh’s attorney laughed at him during the questioning. Then claimed she was coughing. It was entered into the record.
When asked under oath if they reduced the federal deficit, the entire stated purpose of the program, the answer was no.
Not a long answer. Not a qualified one. One word, on the record, from the men who had the authority, and used it, and left.
The Dragnet
Here are some particulars.
According to court filings, DOGE flagged grants containing the words “BIPOC,” “Tribal,” “homosexual,” “LGBTQ.” They did not flag “white.” They did not flag “caucasian.” They did not flag “heterosexual.” That is not a definition. That is a target list wearing a definition’s clothes.
Black veterans’ military experiences, gone. Endangered Native American languages, gone. HIV/AIDS activism scholarship, gone. Appalachian photograph archives, gone. A museum exhibit on the promises of forty acres and the story of enslaved people in the Revolutionary period, gone. A Holocaust documentary about Jewish women, gone. Fox explained it on camera: “It’s a Jewish — specifically focused on Jewish culture and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture. It’s inherently related to DEI for that reason.” He then said the grant was “not for the benefit of humankind.”
That sentence, not for the benefit of humankind, was said in a room where it was recorded, by a man whose attorney did not object until after it was already in the transcript, about a film about women who were murdered because of who they were.
A North Carolina museum had been awarded $349,000 to replace a failing HVAC system. Gone. ChatGPT decided “diverse audiences” might visit its collections.
The NEH’s own acting chair testified that Holocaust scholarship should not be categorized as DEI. DOGE overruled him. He had written to Fox months earlier: “as you’ve made clear, it’s your decision.” The acting chair of a federal agency, ceding his authority to a 20-something from a private equity firm who could not remember the executive order he was enforcing.
They came to cut waste. What they cut was memory.
The cruelty is not new. The technology is.
The Definition
What is DEI, in the definition Fox used? The presence of certain people in a sentence.
Not waste. Not inefficiency. Presence. Black veterans remembering wars this country sent them to fight. Native elders whose languages have fewer than a hundred living speakers. Women in the Holocaust. People with AIDS. The descendants of slaves who were promised forty acres and received, of course, nothing.
You might say Fox was coached not to define it under oath. He was. The search terms define it anyway. He scanned for “Black.” He did not scan for “white.” He scanned for “Tribal.” He did not scan for “caucasian.” Whatever Fox could not articulate in that deposition room reveals, precisely, what the program was designed to do.
The Instrument
The psychologist Abraham Maslow identified it in 1966. If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Scholars call it the law of the instrument. The idea is older than Maslow and belongs to no single origin, because it does not need one. It names something everyone has watched: a person with one tool who stops assessing the problem and starts making the problem fit the tool.
Fox had a chatbot. He fed 1,400 grants through a 120-character prompt and called it a methodology. The NEH was gutted in 22 days. Roughly two-thirds of its staff were fired. Official government business conducted on Signal, set to auto-delete, in violation of the Federal Records Act. The records of what they did, gone, like the grants.
The NEH was not the only room they entered.
Same week as the depositions. According to a court filing, a DOGE engineer told colleagues at his new job he had copied two SSA databases onto a thumb drive, the Numident and the Master Death File. Records covering hundreds of millions of Americans. Names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, race, ethnicity, parents’ names. He claimed “God-level” access to SSA systems, still live after he left. A January court filing showed DOGE had already shared Social Security data with an unauthorized private server and attempted to hand records to an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states.” The SSA inspector general is now investigating.
Researchers at Boston University estimate cuts to foreign aid and health programs have already contributed to roughly 300,000 deaths globally. Federal spending in FY2025: $6.66 trillion. The deficit: $1.8 trillion. DOGE cuts amounted to between 1.25% and 3% of the deficit, according to budget estimates.
The chainsaw was a prop.
The tape will exist for as long as depositions are kept, longer than the grants, longer than their erasure, and in it a man who could not define the word he used to cancel roughly a hundred million dollars in scholarship smirks across a table from the man who in 2020 stood alone on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and asked when the dream begins.
The men who could not define DEI. Who could not remember the executive order they were enforcing. Who erased sixty years of scholarship about Black veterans, Native languages, and forty acres in 22 days, then walked out and printed business cards.
What they revealed in that room is permanent. The smirk. The phone. The fake cough entered into the record. The entitlement of men who never considered, not once, that they would have to answer for any of it.
Onayemi stood on those steps in 2020 and asked the question.
When does the/our American dream begin?
NOTES & SOURCES
The Deposition
American Council of Learned Societies. “ACLS, AHA, and MLA File Motion for Summary Judgment to Restore Previous NEH Function and Funding.” March 6, 2026. https://www.acls.org/news/acls-aha-and-mla-file-motion-for-summary-judgment-to-restore-previous-neh-function-and-funding/
American Council of Learned Societies. “ACLS-AHA-MLA Lawsuit: Discovery Materials.” March 2026. https://www.acls.org/acls-aha-mla-lawsuit-discovery-materials/ (Full deposition transcripts: Justin Fox, January 28, 2026; Nathan Cavanaugh, January 23, 2026; Michael McDonald, January 30, 2026)
People. “DOGE Staffer Tasked With Eliminating DEI Grants Struggles to Define DEI.” March 2026. https://people.com/doge-staffer-tasked-with-eliminating-dei-grants-struggles-to-define-dei-11924877
404 Media. “I Watched 6 Hours of DOGE Bro Testimony. Here’s What They Had to Say For Themselves.” March 2026. https://www.404media.co/i-watched-6-hours-of-doge-bro-testimony-heres-what-they-had-to-say-for-themselves/
Inside Higher Ed. “How DOGE Gutted the NEH in 22 Days.” March 11, 2026. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2026/03/11/how-doge-gutted-neh-22-days (Fox’s March 31 email; HVAC grant; Cavanaugh pushed McDonald to “move faster”)
HuffPost. “You’re Going To Want To Watch This DOGE Staffer Try To Define DEI.” March 11, 2026. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doge-dei-deposition-video_n_69b18db7e4b035c83fff66ed
Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Lawsuit says DOGE used ChatGPT to tag Jewish-themed humanities grants as ‘DEI’ before canceling them.” March 9, 2026. https://www.jta.org/2026/03/09/united-states/lawsuit-says-doge-used-chatgpt-to-tag-jewish-themed-humanities-grants-as-dei-before-canceling-them ($10.4 million awarded to Tikvah Fund after cancellations)
Algemeiner. “DOGE Staffers Used ChatGPT to Cut Holocaust History Grants During Counter-DEI Purges.” March 10, 2026. https://www.algemeiner.com/2026/03/10/doge-staffers-used-chatgpt-cut-holocaust-history-grants-during-counter-dei-purges-lawsuit/
American Historical Association. “Major Update in our NEH Lawsuit.” March 7, 2026. https://www.historians.org/news/major-update-in-our-neh-lawsuit/
The Chainsaw
The Hill. “Musk wields chainsaw onstage at CPAC, touting DOGE cuts.” February 21, 2025. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5156325-elon-musk-cpac-chainsaw/
The Hill. “Musk concedes wielding chain saw on stage to tout DOGE cuts ‘lacked empathy.’” July 2, 2025. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5381121-elon-musk-chainsaw-comment/
The Lawyer and His Sign
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, via Poynter. “What is the American Dream in 2020 — if there is one?” May 31, 2020. https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2020/what-is-the-american-dream-in-2020-if-there-is-one/ (Onayemi on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, May 31, 2020)
Fairmark Partners, LLP. Yinka Onayemi attorney profile. https://fairmarklaw.com/yinka-onayemi
The Social Security Data
NPR. “The government is investigating new claims that DOGE misused Social Security data.” March 11, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/03/11/nx-s1-5745153/doge-social-security-data-whistleblower-investigation
Washington Post. “DOGE member took Social Security data on a thumb drive, whistleblower alleges.” March 10, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/10/social-security-data-breach-doge-2/
FedScoop. “Sen. Peters pushes for new probe of DOGE’s Social Security Administration data dives.” March 2026. https://fedscoop.com/doge-social-security-data-gary-peters-letter/
The Deaths
Boston University School of Public Health. “Tracking Anticipated Deaths from USAID Funding Cuts.” 2025. https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2025/tracking-anticipated-deaths-from-usaid-funding-cuts/ (Brooke Nichols, infectious disease mathematical modeler; peer-reviewed methodology; approximately 300,000 deaths estimated)
The Lancet, via CNN. “USAID cuts may lead to more than 14 million deaths globally by 2030.” July 1, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/politics/us-aid-elimination-study-14-million-deaths
The dream begins when these guys go to prison for destroying historical government government property.
But Allah has recorded it all and On An Appointed Day Allah will decide who to bring into The True Life and keep them there and who to send into Hell. In the meantime The Prophecy (wars rumours of wars strife iniquity disasters in diverse places etc.) MUST come to pass so that Allah can fill Hell with those through whom these things come and reward those through whom these things did not come. Amen?