Another DOGE staffer explaining how he flagged grants at NEH for "DEI" (bsky.app)

For anyone wanting more context this comes from a deposition of Nathan Cavanaugh as part of discovery of a lawsuit by the ACLS. They recently filed for a summary judgement

https://www.acls.org/acls-aha-mla-lawsuit-discovery-material...

https://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/247-Memo-of-...

It doesn't appear that DOGE itself or the individuals is facing any kind of legal consequence here.

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The people who claim to care about "DEI" are very quiet about all of the unqualified people in the current administration.

it seems like if these statements that were part of the grants were 1FA protected then they should not have been part of the grants in the first place. since having 1FA protected statements in the grants allows the government to compel speech by favouring grants that make approved statements in the same way they can suppress speech by targeting grants that include disfavoured statements. people were previously claiming certain buzzwords needed to be included in order to hurdle the grant process. of course this is probably completely unworkable in practice since you need some kind of description of the grant and almost anything could be seen as some kind of speech that might be favored or punished for political reasons.

In a just world, these incompetent children would be unemployed, unemployable, and have to walk around neighborhoods notifying people they live in the area.

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How does someone as young as Cavanaugh become so homophobic. I wanted to believe our society was past this.

What DOGE was doing here effectively erased any non-white person from history. It goes way beyond rolling back "DEI". Essentially they were saying that a project on an incident in history where the participants were white was OK, but a project on a similar incident in history where the participants were black or female or Jewish is not OK because it's "DEI". So for instance, a grant to study labor history through the lens of white coal miners would be OK, but a grant to study labor history through the lens of female Jewish garment workers would get canceled.

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Note the way he brushes off his own attorney's objections, not even looking at or reacting to her, while he discusses why someone who's mass-canceling grants doesn't need any grant-writing experience. Total disdain for any kind of expertise, whether academic or legal.