What to Know
In 2025, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency terminated more than $100 million in grant funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities. Thanks to a lawsuit, people are now learning how DOGE went about doing this, and it’s even worse than you might expect.
According to The New York Times, DOGE relied on AI chatbot ChatGPT to decide which grants to cut. Staffers asked the chatbot to identify any grants that “relate at all to D.E.I.,” and then, in less than a month, canceled 97% of the grants. Why? They were apparently too inclusive and diverse.
Projects that lost funding include a series on American music history.
Per Inside Higher Ed, a project related to digitizing local newspapers was flagged by ChatGPT as being related to DEI and ultimately lost funding because digitization would make the papers “more accessible and customizable which aligns with DEI goals of inclusivity and representation.”
And according to The New York Times, DOGE also canceled grant funding for a documentary about Jewish women’s slave labor during the Holocaust because it focused on women specifically, which apparently makes it “DEI.”
Staffer Justin Fox attempted to explain these decisions and, well, his responses are pretty telling.
The DOGE goons are getting deposed for a lawsuit on behalf of the American History Association and others and holy shit this hurts to watch pic.twitter.com/Oe6MUrYxTz
— Lydia Kauppi (@lydiakauppi) March 11, 2026
Videos in which Fox tries to explain the process have gone viral on social media because he really seemed to struggle to explain why certain projects lost funding. He also couldn’t explain what “DEI” actually means, and kept saying that he referred to Trump’s executive order. He was also asked how he personally would define DEI, and he didn’t seem to know.
In one video circulating on social media, Fox is asked, “Do you agree with ChatGPT’s assessment here that a documentary is DEI if it explores historical events that significantly impacted black civil rights?”
He responded, “Yes.” When asked why that would count as DEI, Fox said, “It’s focused on a singular race. It is not for the benefit of humankind. It’s focused on a specific group or a specific race.”
He was also questioned about the documentary about Jewish women.
A DOGE staffer assigned to the National Endowment for the Humanities to flag grants for "DEI" tries to explain what "DEI" is. This deposition is part of a lawsuit by the @acls1919.bsky.social, @historians.org and @modernlanguage.bsky.social.
— 404 Media (@404media.co) March 10, 2026 at 10:19 AM
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Fox was asked to explain why a documentary about women’s slave labor during the Holocaust is an example of DEI. He said, “It’s the gender-based story that’s inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group.” When asked about which “specific group” he was referring to, Fox explained, “The gender-based. So, females. During the Holocaust.”
He went on to say that the documentary was focused on “DEI principles” because “gender” is one of them.
But when he tried to explain what DEI is, he seemed to have no idea.
The DOGE goons are getting deposed for a lawsuit on behalf of the American History Association and others and holy shit this hurts to watch pic.twitter.com/Oe6MUrYxTz
— Lydia Kauppi (@lydiakauppi) March 11, 2026
A clip circulating on social media also shows Fox’s attempt to explain DEI. He said, “There was the EO [executive order], explicitly laid out the details. I don’t remember it off the top of my head.” But surely, he has some understanding of what DEI means, right? Apparently not. When asked to provide his personal understanding of DEI, he said, “My understanding was exactly what was written in the EO… I don’t remember what was in the EO.”
People reacted on social media.
If you lost your job because of DOGE, this will enrage you.
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) March 12, 2026
They built a whole-ass political crusade around “DEI,” then sent a staffer into a deposition who couldn’t even define it.
His name is Justin Fox and his assignment was to help flag grants for elimination based on a… pic.twitter.com/ppeeFSVJP6
A lot of people assumed that someone who spent time working on this initiative would likely remember the basic details, at the very least. “If a reasonably intelligent person evaluated multiple grants, referring back to specific language for evaluation criteria, eventually they would remember the broad strokes and gain some understanding that would stick with them,” one critic wrote on Threads. “I’m being super charitable here. Did they just feed it all to AI?”
Someone else concluded, “He doesn’t remember any details because he never bothered with them in the first place.”
However, others made the argument that he likely did remember, but didn’t want to say the truth aloud. Another critic argued that to the Trump administration, getting rid of “DEI” means “getting rid of anything that doesn’t focus on Christian white men.” They added, “But he can’t admit it, because that would look bad, so he just keeps repeating that DEI is whatever is in the EO – it’s whatever Trump and Musk tell him it is.”
A fourth critic wrote, “it’s obvious these people had no understanding or ability to comprehend the information they were looking for.”
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