DOGE Tapes Are a Catastrophe

TL;DR

Deposition tapes reveal DOGE used a simplistic ChatGPT prompt to mass-cancel over $100M in NEH humanities grants, flagging Holocaust archives and HVAC upgrades as DEI.

Key Points

• 1.DOGE seized control of the National Endowment for the Humanities within 22 days. NEH has an annual budget of only ~$27M, yet DOGE staffer Nate Kavanaugh — a finance professional with no humanities background — led the takeover starting March 12, 2025.
• 2.ChatGPT 4.5 was used with a dangerously vague prompt to flag grants for cancellation. Justin Fox fed grant descriptions into ChatGPT asking only 'Does this relate at all to DEI? Yes or no in 120 characters' — with no consistent definition of DEI guiding the process.
• 3.A Holocaust survivor documentary and an HVAC upgrade were both flagged as DEI. ChatGPT labeled a $349,000 HVAC grant as DEI because it mentioned 'greater access to diverse audiences,' and a Jewish women's Holocaust documentary was flagged for focusing on 'marginalized female voices.'
• 4.Fox's deposition exposed that even he couldn't define DEI or 'wasteful spending.' When asked whether his $150,000 salary to cut grants was itself wasteful spending, Fox paused noticeably and could not provide a coherent answer, undermining the entire justification for the cuts.
• 5.Amy Gleason, the nominal DOGE administrator, was effectively a figurehead. Both Fox and Kavanaugh identified Steve Davis — not Gleason — as the actual leader of DOGE; Kavanaugh said Davis was 'effectively my manager' and Gleason rarely appeared at meetings.
• 6.Termination notices were sent from a Microsoft.com email, not a .gov address, without McDonald's knowledge. NEH acting chair Michael McDonald had no idea DOGE was using ChatGPT and later discovered his signature block had been used on letters sent from an unofficial email address he had never seen before.
• 7.DOGE staffers used Signal to coordinate grant terminations, violating federal records laws. Fox admitted communicating with Davis and a long list of others via Signal — a major legal issue since government employees are prohibited from conducting official business through disappearing-message private channels.
• 8.The legal case rests primarily on APA violations and unlawful authority, not just First Amendment claims. Plaintiffs argue terminations were arbitrary and capricious, made by actors (DOGE) with no statutory authority over NEH, and that rushing grants out on political timelines without individualized review violates the Administrative Procedures Act.