U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon issued a doge humanities grants ruling on Thursday that barred the Trump administration from carrying out DOGE’s termination of National Endowment for the Humanities grants. She said the terminations were unlawful and unconstitutional, halting what the court described as the largest mass termination of federal grants in NEH history.
McMahon’s NEH ruling
McMahon wrote that DOGE staffers lacked the authority to make the grant termination decisions. In her ruling, she said the review process “did not conform to, or even resemble, NEH’s ordinary grant-review process,” and she blocked the administration from proceeding with the cuts.
The judge’s order reaches the humanities grants that DOGE targeted at the NEH, the federal agency that awards those grants. For people tied to awards under review, the immediate change is simple: the terminations cannot go forward under this ruling.
Protected characteristics and grant cuts
The court found that DOGE used protected characteristics as criteria for termination. McMahon wrote that treating Black civil-rights history, Jewish testimony about the Holocaust, the Asian American experience, the treatment of children of Native tribes, or the mention of a woman as a marker of lack of merit or wastefulness is not lawful.
She also said it was deeply troubling for the government to deem a project about Jewish women disfavored because it centered on Jewish cultures and female voices. That language puts the judge’s reasoning at the center of the case: the challenged cuts were not just broad spending decisions, but decisions tied to subjects and identities the court said could not lawfully be used that way.
Fox and Cavanaugh depositions
The ruling lands after March depositions from two former DOGE staffers, Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh. ABC News reported that they described using ChatGPT and DEI keywords to carry out massive cuts, and Cavanaugh said they originally identified grants to cut using words such as DEI, DEIA, Equity, Inclusion, BIPAC, and LGBTQ.
Cavanaugh also said the final decision about cuts was up to the head of individual agencies. In his deposition, he said, “No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero.”
Last January, President Donald Trump returned to office and empowered Elon Musk to slash federal spending as a lead adviser in the newly created DOGE. Within days, agencies were directed to put DEI staff on leave and related programs were shuttered, setting the stage for the cuts McMahon just blocked.
What happens after Thursday
The ruling leaves the grant terminations stopped unless a higher court changes the order. For NEH grant recipients and applicants whose awards were swept into DOGE’s review, the operative fact now is the court’s finding that the process itself was unlawful and unconstitutional.
