DOGE Used ChatGPT to Cancel $100M in Federal Grants
DOGE staffers "in their 20s" used ChatGPT to scan humanities grants for DEI content — the AI flagged an HVAC replacement as DEI. Within 22 days, $100 million in grants were cancelled and 65% of NEH staff were terminated.
Court testimony in March 2026 revealed that DOGE staffers — described as being "in their 20s" — used ChatGPT to scan 1,163 National Endowment for the Humanities grants for DEI content. No definition of DEI was provided to the AI, no humans reviewed its reasoning, and no subject-matter experts were consulted.
The AI flagged 1,057 of the 1,163 grants. Only 42 were kept. Within 22 days, the NEH had cancelled $100 million in grants and terminated 65% of its staff.
Among the cancelled grants:
- A $349,000 HVAC replacement for a museum — flagged as "DEI" by ChatGPT
- Holocaust education programs
- Italian-American immigrant archives
- Appalachian photograph digitization projects
- Native American language preservation programs
The incident crystallized the absurdity of DOGE's approach: untrained young staffers wielding AI tools they didn't understand to make consequential decisions about programs they knew nothing about, destroying decades of cultural preservation work in the process.