A former Trump administration staffer testified under oath that humanities grants referencing LGBTQ+ people were flagged for cancellation, sometimes simply because the word appeared in a project description.

The testimony from Nathan Cavanaugh, a political appointee in his late 20s who worked with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team via the General Services Administration, offers an unusually detailed window into how the administration moved to purge diversity-related projects from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The NEH distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in grants each year to support historical research, museums, archives, and public humanities programs across the United States.

Cavanaugh’s January deposition, recently released on YouTube, was part of a lawsuit brought by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association. The groups argue that the administration unlawfully terminated NEH grants connected to scholarship on race, gender, and LGBTQ+ communities.

At the center of the dispute is a process that, according to sworn testimony, relied heavily on scanning short grant descriptions for language connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Cavanaugh told attorneys that he and another DOGE team member, Justin Fox, reviewed spreadsheets listing hundreds of grants issued during President Joe Biden’s administration. Their task, he said, was to identify projects that might conflict with President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting DEI programs.

Neither man came from the academic or humanities worlds from which they were reviewing grants.

Cavanaugh, 29, built his career in the venture-backed startup world. A former Indiana University student who left school to start companies, he co-founded the technology firm Brainbase, which manages intellectual property licensing for brands, and later launched the accounting software startup FlowFi. He joined the government through the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency effort, which embedded teams of political appointees across federal agencies to identify programs for elimination or restructuring.

Fox arrived from finance. Before entering government, he worked as an associate at the investment firm Nexus Capital Management. In the administration, he served as a senior adviser at GSA and joined Cavanaugh on the DOGE “small agencies” team, which reviewed federal grants across a range of agencies.

Their work at the National Endowment for the Humanities involved reviewing hundreds of projects through the lens of executive orders aimed at eliminating federal spending tied to diversity initiatives.

Fox, in a separate online deposition, testified that certain patterns quickly emerged.

“Promoting an LGBTQ study, stipending research on gender fluidity,” he said when asked what kinds of grants tended to stand out during the review process.

He explained that grants referencing LGBTQ+ topics could be interpreted as potentially conflicting with the administration’s directives. “LGBTQ is often associated with underrepresented minority groups,” Fox testified.

Cavanaugh’s deposition offered specific examples of how that logic played out.

One grant that drew scrutiny proposed a public discussion series titled “Examining experiences of LGBTQ military service.” The program aimed to bring veterans and community members together to discuss the experiences of marginalized service members, including women, Black veterans, Native Americans, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people.

Asked why the project had been flagged, Cavanaugh offered a blunt explanation. “Because it explicitly says LGBTQ,” he testified.

Another grant exploring the legacy of HIV and AIDS activism and prison abolition also raised concerns. Cavanaugh testified that references to queer scholarship contributed to the decision.

“We felt the latter part of the description, specifically bringing feminist and queer insights into prison abolition … gender and LGBTQ studies and so forth,” he said. “So we felt that this referenced LGBTQ and preferencing and DEI altogether.”

Fox testified that identifying those connections was a central guidepost for the review.

“There was an executive order that said to eliminate [spending] on DEI and other wasteful government spending, and that was the lens,” he said.

Court filings in the case describe how the process unfolded behind the scenes.

According to a memorandum filed by the plaintiffs, Fox searched the federal grants database before meeting with National Endowment for the Humanities leadership, looking for projects containing terms such as “gay,” “BIPOC,” “indigenous,” “tribal,” “melting pot,” and “equality.” 

The filing states those searches generated lists of grants referencing race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, projects that Fox and Cavanaugh then reviewed for possible termination. 

The memorandum also states that Fox ran hundreds of grant descriptions through ChatGPT, asking the system: “Does the following relate at all to DEI?” 

Fox testified that he did not define what “DEI” meant for the system and did not know how the model interpreted the term, according to the court record. 

The filing says the AI tool flagged numerous projects as DEI simply because their descriptions referenced marginalized communities or topics involving race, religion, gender, or sexuality. 

Among them, the memorandum states, were a project about the 1873 Colfax Massacre and its legacy for Black civil rights, a biography of Black jurist Oscar Adams Jr., and an anthology translating fiction by Jewish writers reflecting on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. 

According to the lawsuit, the scope of the cancellations included more than 1,400 active NEH grants representing over $100 million that were terminated, eliminating roughly 97 percent of the agency’s active grants. 

The filing also states that Fox personally sent termination notices using an unofficial Microsoft email address rather than the agency’s normal grants system. 

Those notices used nearly identical language and did not include individualized explanations for why projects were canceled, the memorandum says. 

Internal communications cited in the filing show Acting NEH Chair Michael McDonald warning that many cancellations had “no justification,” though the records indicate he acknowledged the final decision rested with DOGE. 

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The testimony also revealed how little academic expertise informed the process.

Cavanaugh admitted that he and Fox did not consult scholars or the NEH’s peer review system before identifying projects for potential cancellation. Instead, they relied largely on their own judgment while scanning grant summaries. “I think a person can have enough judgment from reading books and being well-informed outside of traditional experience to make judgment calls about obvious things like a grant that literally lists DEI in its description,” he testified.

But when attorneys asked what books informed those judgments, he conceded he had not consulted any.

“There were no books,” Cavanaugh said.