DOGE Bro Tasked With Canceling DEI Grants Struggles To Define DEI In Cringey Deposition Video

A staff member for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) who was in charge of flagging federal grants for cancelation because of "DEI" struggled to define the term during a legal deposition.

Justin Fox was assigned to review grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for DOGE. His findings terminated more than 1,400 NEH grants.

In his deposition for a lawsuit filed by multiple organizations impacted by the DOGE NEH decisions, Fox described his role as highlighting any projects that would be disqualified for federal funding because they promoted "diversity, equity and inclusion" as defined by MAGA Republican President Donald Trump’s executive orders (EOs).

Trump issued multiple EOs in January 2025 targeting DEI. The primary orders are titled:

• Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (EO 14151)
• Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (EO 14173)
• Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (EO 14168)

These actions aimed to terminate DEI offices, roles, and programs across all federal agencies.

Fox had no personal academic experience in the humanities nor in DEI and relied on ChatGPT to identify programs to be cut. Awarded programs' descriptions and other parameters were fed to ChatGPT which kicked out a 247-page spreadsheet with a "Yes/NO DEI?" column and the "DEI rationale" based on words or phrases fed in as DEI red flags.

The word list made headlines previously when it was sent as a memo to USDA employees and when it resulted in the removal by the Defense Department of references to the WWII plane Enola Gay, which dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, on their websites because the plane's name includes the word "gay."

The forbidden terms list fed to ChatGPT included: women, BIPOC, POC, people of color, gay, lesbian, gender, transgender, nonbinary, LGBTQ, Black, Latino, Indigenous, Two-Spirit, and tribal.

It does not include men, white, Caucasian, heterosexual, or Christian.

When Fox was deposed, his knowledge of DEI was so lacking, he struggled to define what "diversity, equity, and inclusion" is without looking at Trump's EOs—which also don't define DEI, just denigrate it as bad. Yet Fox's decisions led to retroactive cuts of both NEH grants and personnel.

You can see Fox fail to define DEI here:

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People found Fox's tap dance routine around both the question and personal responsibility less than honorable.

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Fox wasn't alone in his ignorance nor arrogance.

His DOGE bro Nathan Cavanaugh's deposition was equally cringeworthy. Cavanaugh was also tasked with reviewing the NEH and deciding which projects should be cut. Unlike Fox, who couldn't define or explain his own judgment parameters, Cavanaugh asserts that anything with LGBTQ in the description is DEI.

You can see excerpts from Cavanaugh's deposition here:

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As a result of their performance, the Modern Language Association (MLA), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and American Historical Association (AHA) filed a motion for summary judgment in their case seeking to "reverse the elimination of grants, grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)."

In a statement, MLA shared:

"Discovery documents made available as part of the motion reveal that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) used a flawed ChatGPT process to identify 'DEI programs' and inform decisions to terminate grants awarded by the NEH."

"Depositions reveal that DOGE team members made the decisions about funding—despite having no legal authority to do so; document the use of Signal by DOGE and NEH staff to communicate about their process in violation of the Federal Records Act; and make clear that some grants were terminated despite NEH staff concluding that they did not conflict with new policies coming from the Trump Administration."

The Trump administration has already disavowed DOGE after they were exposed for saving no money, contributing nothing to reducing the deficit, and harming programs popular with MAGA voters.

DOGE was disbanded in November 2025, about eight months early, when Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director Scott Kupor told Reuters that DOGE "doesn't exist."

Musk and Trump are no longer best buddies either.

It looks like the DOGE bros are about to get the infamous Trump bus treatment.

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