DOGE Used ChatGPT to Identify and Cancel $100M in Humanities Grants

Government building in Washington DC with classical columns and a laptop displaying an AI chatbot interface on the steps

Documents filed in two lawsuits against the National Endowment for the Humanities reveal that two DOGE employees used ChatGPT to identify and cancel more than $100 million in previously approved humanities grants. The AI chatbot was asked a simple yes-or-no question about whether each grant related to DEI, and its judgments were accepted without question.

How ChatGPT Decided the Fate of 1,477 Grants

In March 2025, two Department of Government Efficiency employees — Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh — arrived at the National Endowment for the Humanities with a mandate to cancel grants that conflicted with President Trump\'s agenda. Neither had any background in the humanities.

Rather than reviewing the grants themselves, they pulled short summaries from the internet and fed them into ChatGPT with this prompt: "Does the following relate at all to D.E.I.? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with \'Yes\' or \'No.\'"

The results were sweeping and often absurd. ChatGPT flagged a documentary about Jewish women\'s slave labor during the Holocaust because its focus on gender risked "contributing to D.E.I. by amplifying marginalized voices." A project to digitize the papers of a British general from the American Revolution was flagged for "promoting inclusivity and diversity in historical research." Even a grant to digitize Black newspapers for a historical database was labeled as DEI.

The Scale of the Cuts

Two weeks after arriving, the DOGE employees sent a master list of 1,477 problematic awards — nearly every active grant made during the Biden administration — to the agency\'s acting chairman, Michael McDonald. He agreed to terminate them, describing it as creating a "clean slate" for Trump\'s "America First" agenda.

The cancellations clawed back more than $100 million, roughly half of the agency\'s annual budget. Many organizations were thrown into upheaval, with some projects forced to shut down entirely.

The Lawsuits

A coalition including the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and the Authors Guild has filed suit arguing that DOGE illegally took control of the agency. They claim the cuts violated the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Constitution, and were driven by discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender.

The plaintiffs are seeking reinstatement of the grants and want the historical record to reflect the methods and motives behind the cancellations.

The Bigger Picture

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded more than $6.5 billion to over 70,000 projects since its creation in 1965, including landmark works like Ken Burns\'s "The Civil War." Grants are normally awarded through rigorous competitive review involving multiple rounds of scholarly assessment. In over two decades at the agency, acting chairman McDonald said he could recall fewer than a half-dozen grants being revoked — all for failure to carry out promised work, not political reasons.

The Bottom Line

Using ChatGPT to make $100 million funding decisions is exactly as reckless as it sounds. The AI was given a deliberately broad question — "does this relate at all to D.E.I.?" — and unsurprisingly flagged almost everything, including Holocaust research and American Revolution archives. The DOGE employees did not question a single one of ChatGPT\'s judgments. This is not AI-driven efficiency — it is intellectual vandalism automated by a chatbot that does not understand what it is reading. The lawsuits are the predictable consequence of treating the nation\'s humanities funding like a spam filter.