A former Trump administration staffer testified under oath that humanities grants that mentioned LGBTQ+ people were flagged for cancellation, sometimes simply because the word appeared in the project description.
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The testimony of Nathan Kavanaugh, a political appointee in his late 20s who worked with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team through the General Services Administration, provides an unusually detailed window into how the administration moved to eliminate diversity-related projects from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
NEH distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in grants each year to support historical research, museums, archives, and public humanities programs across the United States.
Cavanaugh’s January affidavit, recently released on YouTube, was part of a lawsuit filed by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association. The group alleges that the administration illegally terminated NEH grants related to scholarship related to race, gender, and the LGBTQ+ community.
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At the center of the dispute is a process that relied heavily on scanning short grant descriptions for language related to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, according to sworn testimony.
Kavanaugh told his lawyers that he and another DOGE team member, Justin Fox, reviewed a spreadsheet listing hundreds of grants issued under President Joe Biden’s administration. Their mission is to identify projects that may conflict with President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting DEI programs, he said.
Neither man came from the world of academia or the humanities where they were reviewing grants.
Mr. Kavanaugh, 29, built his career in the world of venture-backed startups. A former Indiana University student who dropped out of school to start a company, he co-founded Brainbase, a technology company that manages intellectual property licenses for brands, and later launched accounting software startup FlowFi. He joined the government through the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The department would assemble teams of political appointees across federal agencies to identify programs for repeal or restructuring.
Fox came from finance. Prior to joining government, he worked as an associate at investment firm Nexus Capital Management. In the administration, he served as a senior advisor to GSA and joined Kavanaugh on DOGE’s “Small Government Agencies” team, which reviews federal grants across various government agencies.
Their work at the National Endowment for the Humanities included reviewing hundreds of projects through the lens of executive orders aimed at reducing federal spending related to diversity efforts.
In a separate online deposition, Fox testified that a pattern quickly emerged.
When asked what types of grants tend to stand out during the review process, he answered, “Grants for the promotion of LGBTQ research and research on gender fluidity.”
He explained that grants that mention LGBTQ+ themes could be interpreted as potentially conflicting with administrative directives. “LGBTQ is often associated with underrepresented minority groups,” Fox testified.
Mr. Kavanaugh’s testimony provided a concrete example of how that logic plays out.
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One grant that drew scrutiny proposed a public discussion series titled “Exploring the LGBTQ Military Experience.” The program aimed to bring together veterans and community members to discuss the experiences of marginalized military members, including women, Black veterans, Native Americans, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people.
When asked why the project was flagged, Kavanaugh was frank. “Because it clearly says LGBTQ,” he testified.
Another grant examining the legacy of HIV and AIDS activism and prison abolition also raised concerns. Kavanaugh testified that references to homosexual scholarship played a role in his decision.
“We felt like we were bringing feminist and queer insights to the second half of the narrative, especially prison abolition…gender and LGBTQ studies,” he said. “So we felt this was a perfect reference to LGBTQ, priorities and DEI.”
Mr. Fox testified that identifying those connections is a central guide to the review.
“There was an executive order to eliminate it.” [spending] “It focused on DEI and other wasteful government spending, and that was the lens,” he said.
Court filings in the case describe how the process unfolded behind the scenes.
Before meeting with leaders of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fox searched federal grant databases for projects that included terms such as “gay,” “BIPOC,” “Indigenous,” “tribe,” “melting pot,” and “equality,” according to a memo filed by the plaintiffs.
Those searches produced a list of grants that referenced race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, projects that Fox and Kavanaugh later considered for possible termination, the filing said.
The memo also states that Fox ran hundreds of grant descriptions through ChatGPT and asked the system, “Are the following related to DEI at all?”
Fox testified that he did not define what “DEI” meant to the system and did not know how the model would interpret the term, according to court records.
The AI tool flagged a number of projects as DEI simply because their descriptions touched on marginalized communities and topics involving race, religion, gender, and sexuality, according to the filing.
Among them, the memorandum included a project on the 1873 Colfax Massacre and its legacy for black civil rights, a biography of black jurist Oscar Adams Jr., and an anthology of translations of novels by Jewish writers reflecting on the Soviet Holocaust.
According to the complaint, the scope of the revocation included more than 1,400 active NEH grants worth more than $100 million that were terminated, eliminating approximately 97 percent of NEH’s active grants.
The filing also states that Fox personally sent termination notices using an unofficial Microsoft email address, rather than through the normal grant system.
The memo said the notices used nearly identical language and did not include a separate explanation of why the projects were canceled.
Internal communications cited in the filing show NEH Acting Chairman Michael MacDonald warning that many of the cancellations were “without good reason,” but records show he acknowledged that the final decision rested with DOGE.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The testimony also revealed how little academic expertise informed the process.
Mr. Kavanaugh acknowledged that he and Mr. Fox did not consult academics or the NEH peer review system before identifying projects for possible cancellation. Instead, they relied primarily on their own judgment while reviewing grant summaries. “I think people can read books and have enough information outside of their traditional experience to have enough judgment to make decisions about something as obvious as a grant that literally has DEI in its description,” he testified.
However, when his lawyer asked him what books these judgments were based on, he admitted that he had not read any.
“There were no books,” Kavanaugh said.
Watch a portion of Nathan Cavanaugh’s deposition below.
– YouTube www.youtube.com
Source: Advocate.com – www.advocate.com
