Lawsuit Reveals DOGE Used ChatGPT to Decide Which Grants to Kill
February 25, 2026 · 2 min read
Arthur Griffin
The method the Department of Government Efficiency used to cancel millions of dollars in National Endowment for the Humanities grants was, according to a newly amended federal complaint, staggeringly crude: paste a grant title into ChatGPT, ask if it relates to DEI, and kill anything that got a "Yes" in under 120 characters.
That's what the Authors Guild's proposed amended complaint against the U.S. government alleges, naming DOGE staffers Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox as the individuals responsible for the process.
The 120-Character Test
According to the complaint detailed by Techdirt, Fox fed grant titles into ChatGPT with a prompt roughly equivalent to: "Does the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with 'Yes.' or 'No.' followed by a brief explanation."
The complaint alleges Fox made no effort to define what "DEI" meant in the context of the prompt, did not verify whether ChatGPT's interpretation matched any legal or policy definition, and applied the results across grants that had already survived full peer review.
Why This Matters for Every Grant Seeker
The NEH terminations are the most documented case, but the pattern extends across agencies. Grant recipients in the humanities, social sciences, and public health have reported abrupt cancellations with minimal explanation over the past year. If the Authors Guild lawsuit succeeds, it could establish legal precedent that AI-assisted grant reviews require due process safeguards — a ruling that would ripple across every federal funding agency.
For active grant holders, the immediate takeaway is defensive: understand your award terms, document all communications, and know your appeal rights. For prospective applicants, the landscape is shifting. Congress largely rejected the administration's proposed cuts in the FY2026 spending bills, but executive-branch discretion over disbursement remains a wild card.
Grant seekers can use tools like Granted to monitor which programs are actively issuing awards versus those stuck in administrative limbo.