Lawsuit: DOGE Used ChatGPT to Cancel $100M in NEH Humanities Grants
March 11, 2026 · 2 min read
Claire Cummings
Court filings unsealed this week expose a startling detail in the federal government's largest mass grant cancellation: Department of Government Efficiency staffers used OpenAI's ChatGPT to decide which National Endowment for the Humanities grants to terminate.
The American Council of Learned Societies, American Historical Association, and Modern Language Association filed a motion for summary judgment on March 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, presenting discovery materials that detail a 22-day blitz ending April 1, 2025, during which 97% of active NEH grants — roughly 1,400 awards worth over $100 million — were terminated.
How a Chatbot Decided the Fate of Humanities Research
DOGE personnel fed grant descriptions into ChatGPT with a single prompt: "Does the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters." No definition of DEI was provided. No safeguards against discrimination were implemented. The AI's responses were compiled into a spreadsheet and used to drive funding decisions.
The chatbot flagged grants containing terms like "BIPOC," "LGBTQ," and "Tribal" regardless of context. Among the cancelled projects: a $349,000 HVAC replacement at North Carolina's High Point Museum, a documentary on Jewish women's slave labor during the Holocaust, an archival project documenting Italian American lives, and multiple initiatives to preserve endangered Native American languages.
Legal Claims and What Comes Next
The plaintiffs allege violations of the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, and separation of powers — arguing DOGE staffers lacked statutory authority to override Congressional appropriations. The filings also cite Federal Records Act violations, noting DOGE employees communicated via Signal messages set to auto-delete.
Acting NEH chair Michael McDonald acknowledged yielding authority to DOGE staff, writing in internal communications: "It's your decision on whether to discontinue funding." Meanwhile, NEH awarded a $10 million single-source grant to the Tikvah Fund following the mass terminations.
ACSL President Joy Connolly called the use of ChatGPT to identify "wasteful" grants "perhaps the biggest advertisement for the need for humanities education."
Humanities researchers and nonprofits with active or pending NEH grants should monitor the case closely and document project impacts. For deeper analysis of how these terminations affect the grant landscape, visit the Granted blog.