Nathan Cavanaugh
Screenshot From YouTube

A former DOGE staffer has testified that humanities grants were marked for possible cancellation simply because they mentioned LGBTQ+ people, shedding fresh light on how federal funding decisions were made inside the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The sworn testimony from Nathan Cavanaugh offers a rare look at a process that critics say reduced public humanities work to a keyword search, with projects tied to race, gender and LGBTQ+ communities singled out during a review ordered under President Donald Trump's anti‑DEI directives.

How DOGE Staff Flagged LGBTQ+ Grants For Cancellation

Cavanaugh, a political appointee in his twenties who worked with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team while detailed from the General Services Administration, said he and fellow DOGE staffer Justin Fox reviewed spreadsheets of grants awarded during Joe Biden's administration. Their assignment was to identify projects that might conflict with executive orders aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.

The stakes were significant because the NEH distributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support museums, archives, historical research and public humanities programmes across the United States. The testimony emerged from a lawsuit brought by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association, which argue the administration unlawfully terminated grants connected to scholarship on race, gender and LGBTQ+ communities.

According to the depositions, the review process centred on scanning short grant descriptions for language linked to DEI. Fox said certain patterns stood out quickly, including, 'Promoting an LGBTQ study, stipending research on gender fluidity,' and added that grants mentioning LGBTQ+ subjects could be seen as conflicting with the administration's directives because, 'LGBTQ is often associated with underrepresented minority groups.'

Cavanaugh gave a stark example involving a public discussion series titled 'Examining experiences of LGBTQ military service', which was designed to bring veterans and community members together to discuss the experiences of women, Black veterans, Native Americans, immigrants and LGBTQ+ service members. Asked why that project was flagged, he answered, 'Because it explicitly says LGBTQ.'

Another grant, focused on the legacy of HIV and AIDS activism and prison abolition, also drew scrutiny. Cavanaugh testified that references to queer scholarship played a role in the decision, saying, 'We felt the latter part of the description, specifically bringing feminist and queer insights into prison abolition ... gender and LGBTQ studies and so forth. So we felt that this referenced LGBTQ and preferencing and DEI altogether.'

Why ChatGPT And No Expert Input Matter

Fox also testified that he built a spreadsheet that ran grant summaries through ChatGPT to generate explanations for why a project might relate to DEI. He said the tool was used to help summarise grants for agency leaders and described it as 'only a tool to assist in contextualizing', but he also acknowledged that tagging a grant as DEI could place it on a path to cancellation.

That use of AI is one of the most striking details to emerge from the sworn testimony, not least because neither of the men reviewing the grants came from the academic or humanities fields they were judging. Cavanaugh built his career in start-ups and co-founded Brainbase and FlowFi, while Fox came from finance and previously worked at Nexus Capital Management before entering government.

The depositions further suggested that scholarly expertise played little role in the process. Cavanaugh admitted that he and Fox did not consult scholars or rely on the NEH's peer review system before identifying grants for possible termination, instead depending largely on their own judgement while scanning summaries.

When pressed on what informed those judgement calls, Cavanaugh said, 'I think a person can have enough judgment from reading books and being well-informed outside of traditional experience to make judgment calls about obvious things like a grant that literally lists DEI in its description.' But when attorneys asked which books he had relied on, his answer was blunt: 'There were no books.'

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