A US federal judge has ruled that grant cuts carried out underElon Musk-backed DOGEwere unlawful after staff reportedly used ChatGPT and keyword searches linked to diversity, gender and race to help terminate funding programmes across the National Endowment for the Humanities.
ABC Newsreported that the decision, issued on Thursday by US District Judge Colleen McMahon in New York, blocks the Trump administration from enforcing the disputed grant cancellations.
The Department of Government Efficiency, widely known as DOGE, was created after Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 and tasked Musk with helping reduce federal spending. Agencies across the government were quickly instructed to suspend DEI-related programmes and place diversity staff on leave, part of a wider push against initiatives tied to equity and inclusion policies.
The latest ruling offers one of the clearest judicial rebukes yet of how those cuts were carried out. Judge McMahon said DOGE staff lacked the authority to terminate grants and criticised what she described as a process that failed to resemble any normal federal review system. 'There can be no serious dispute that the review process implemented by DOGE did not conform to, or even resemble, NEH's ordinary grant-review process,' she wrote.
Testimonies from former DOGE staff members Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh said ChatGPT and keyword searches were used to help decide which federal grants should be cut. Court records show that terms including 'DEI,' 'Equity,' 'Inclusion,' 'BIPAC,' and 'LGBTQ' were part of the review process.
McMahon said that approach may have broken the law because it appeared protected groups and identities were being used as reasons to remove funding. 'Treating Black civil-rights history, Jewish testimony about the Holocaust, the oft-forgotten Asian American experience, the shameful treatment of the children of Native tribes, or the mere mention of a woman as a marker of lack of merit or wastefulness is not lawful,' she said.
The judge also raised concerns about cuts affecting Holocaust-related projects and grants focused on Jewish history. She said it was especially concerning that projects about Jewish women who survived Nazi persecution were targeted at a time when antisemitism is again becoming more visible in the US.
'At a time when the specter of antisemitism has reemerged from the shadows, for our government to deem a project about Jewish women disfavored because it centered on Jewish cultures and female voices is deeply troubling,' she wrote.
It is still unclear how much influence artificial intelligence had over the final decisions. The testimony suggests ChatGPT was used during the review process, but agency leaders reportedly still had the final say on which grants were cancelled.
The controversy deepened after it emerged how quickly the cuts were carried out and who was involved. Fox and Cavanaugh had no prior government experience before joining the programme. Both came from finance and tech backgrounds.
Source: International Business Times UK
