“I got out of jail last Tuesday to a message from my pediatrician, saying ‘call me.’ Then, as I’m looking at other messages, I find out that NYU had closed down their youth gender clinic."
My personal opinion is that the goal of this project was not destroy NEH.
It was to punish and demoralize federal workers and award recipients.
And it was to free up money in order to convert the agency, which has bipartisan support, from an intellectual institution to a propaganda machine.
Agree!
The students, faculty, and staff of Ohio State deserve so much better than the absolutely disastrous leadership that has been inflicted on this institution over the years
NEW: For @talkingpointsmemo.com, I wrote about how the idea that QAnon "was right" because of the Epstein Files reveals a lack of basic understanding about the Q movement. Q was never just about trafficking, it was a plan to save the world.
talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/how-the...
it turns out that the answer to the headline here is: like humans. listen. don't judge, but don't endorse the beliefs, either.
as my friend wisely said: “There's value in having friendships where it's like, ‘I love you, but also, you're full of shit.’” www.404media.co/ai-psychosis...
In "Folding the Pages of Computer History: Occupational Health and Office Space," Rose Rowson argues that obstetric concerns and technologies should be integrated into the history of computing.
Read for free today! doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Honestly, I look at this and think, that is a full and rich life.
Process is important. Thoughtful process governed how #NEH carefully reviewed grants for years. Review the discovery materials to see how DOGE undid this in a matter of weeks.
www.mla.org/Resources/Ad...
🤮
“Repeat after me: ‘we saved…’”
“We…optimized spend?”
“Try again!”
Goals
So funny how he has to translate normal words into corporate bombast before he can absorb or respond to them.
“You were supposed to look for savings?”
“We were supposed to…eliminate spend…through optimization.”
It's stunning how ignorant the DOGE bros were who were sent into agencies. Justin Fox cannot even articulate in his own words what his "present understanding of DEI" is: he can't even formulate a coherent sentence about it. I wouldn't hire him for basic tech support. #NEH
youtu.be/jomaMvItnew?...
Also why are so many nazis like this?????
I wonder if the profs suing UCLA with the Trump DOJ are like, “Weird that the Trump admin, Loyal Friends of the Jewish People, are doing this.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers also asked Mr. Fox about some grants flagged in his original ChatGPT search, like one for a documentary about the 1873 massacre in Colfax, La., where dozens of Black men were murdered by a mob of former Confederates and Ku Klux Klan members. ChatGPT had deemed it “D.E.I.” Mr. Fox said he agreed. “Because it focuses on exclusively anti-Black violence, which is a race,” he said.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers also noted that Mr. Fox’s original ChatGPT search flagged a number of projects relating to the Holocaust, including the documentary about Jewish women who were slave laborers. Asked if he agreed with ChatGPT, Mr. Fox said: “It’s a Jewish — specifically focused on Jewish culture and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture. It’s inherently related to D.E.I. for that reason.”
These anecdotes distill the attitude pretty succinctly.
Can't study a Klan massacre because it's "Black history" (this would be news to the Klan!). Can't study labor in Nazi concentration camps, because it would "amplify" Jewish voices.
These cancellations were so much more horrible for other people than for me personally, as my fellowship was coming to an end. Huge losses to hundreds of people and dozens of long term projects and ongoing relationships. The loss to humanities has been incalculable
As evidence, the filing notes a list Mr. Fox compiled of what he called the "craziest" and "other bad" grants, which he planned to highlight on DOGE's X account. He used three dozen keywords, including "L.G.B.T.Q.""BIPOC," "tribal, "ethnicity," "gender," "equality," "immigration "citizenship" and "melting pot." (A majority of the two dozen grants deemed "craziest" related to L.G.B.T.Q. subjects.) In the deposition, Mr. Fox said the list reflected his "subjective" judgment about whether a grant might be out of line with Mr. Trump's executive order. "Crazy' is one way of saying it," he said. "Most incriminating' is another way."
Why did I think they simply canceled all of them. Nope it was discriminatory
Look at that fucker
Somehow the use of the LLM makes it all the more enraging, this literally high-powered (CPU-burning, fossil-fuel-burning) technology used to basically do a keyword search, adding no refinement or expertise, just augmenting ignorance in the service of destroying knowledge-making processes
Here is the spreadsheet DOGE had ChatGPT produce, to determine which grants were too DEI www.historians.org/wp-content/u...
NEH's budget is tiny—not just compared to NSF/NIH, but compared to humanities funding in every other wealthy nation. What little was there was largely rescinded and several programs were cut in full last year. It decimated not merely individual projects but whole corners of the humanities in the US.
Picture of DOGE guy Nate Cavanaugh
Screenshot of my DOGE letter “Dr. Joseph Rezek Dear NEH Grantee, This letter provides notice that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is terminating your federal grant (Grant Application No. FEL29509824) effective April 3, 2025, in accordance with the termination clause in your Grant Agreement. Your grant no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination due to several reasonable causes, as outlined in 2CFR§200.340. For instance, NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President's agenda. The President's February 19, 2025 executive order mandates that the NEH eliminate all non-statutorily required activities and functions. See Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, E.O. 14217 (Feb. 19, 2025). Your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities. Any objections or appeals to this termination will be managed in strict accordance with the President's Executive Orders,
Last year, this guy (left) from DOGE used ChatGPT to find NEH grants that were too “DEI” for Trump, and canceled them, including mine, as shown by the letter I received last April (right). Huge new NYT article on the back story link below
The NEH is just small beans. Like 6 hours of war could fund it for a whole year.
As someone who watched the careful stewardship of grants over many years, the lack of care and the dismissal of the hard work of scholars and NEH program staff described here is devastating and shameful.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...
I need to watch this!
In this new report, @ksavin.bsky.social, and @calliefreitag.bsky.social and I explain how Trump 2.0 and DOGE built up new barriers to the already-difficult process of getting disability benefits.
Let's talk about what we found, and what we recommend to address the issues. 🧵
We keep hearing the public university systems saying, ‘We’re following SB 37.’ I’m sorry, no, SB 37 does not give you the mandate to violate people’s academic freedom and free speech.
Shout out to all the Texas professors fighting for democracy.
@texasaaup.bsky.social @aaup.org
