The Trump administration’s efforts to slash diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives left another acronym on the chopping block: one museum’s $350,000 grant to replace its heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system.
Court documents from a recent lawsuit reveal the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed more than $100 million in projected funding distributed by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), about half the agency’s yearly budget, on the basis of projects relating to DEI. DOGE employees tasked with overseeing the cuts, Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh, used ChatGPT to determine if proposals pertained to DEI efforts, filings show.
The American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and the Authors Guild filed a joint motion earlier this month arguing DOGE violated First Amendment rights and the Constitution’s equal protection clause by cuts made through illegal control of the NEH. Cancelling grants and funding on the basis of DEI constitutes discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and other qualities, the organizations claimed.
A spreadsheet presented by the plaintiff as evidence, shows a list of prompts Fox and Cavanaugh asked ChatGPT to determine if grants were DEI-related.
“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. Do not use ‘this initiative’ or ‘this description’ in your response,” the prompts begin.
Among the grants cancelled was a request by the High Point Museum, a history museum in North Carolina, for $349,000 to replace an aging HVAC system to “create a better preservation environment for the varied collections it houses,” according to the proposal contained in the spreadsheet. New equipment, the proposal said, could ensure long-term viability of making its collections accessible, and would be more energy-efficient. ChatGPT flagged it is “#DEI” in its response to the prompt.
“Yes. Improving HVAC systems enhances preservation conditions for collections, aligning with the goal of providing greater access to diverse audiences. #DEI,” ChatGPT responded, according to the spreadsheet.
According to Edith Brady, High Point Museum director, the museum received the grant and began the project, but it was later terminated.
“We were able to recoup about 70% of the original award through the grant termination clause,” she told Fortune in an email.
The White House did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
DOGE’s offensive on DEI
The massive funding cuts were part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to cull government-backed, DEI-related projectsI. On President Donald Trump’s first day of his second term, he signed an executive order banning diversity initiatives, following up in March 2025 with another proclamation targeting funding for programs his claims advance “improper ideology” and “divisive narratives.”
DOGE, created as a special advisory and not an official agency on Trump’s inauguration day, was tasked with enforcing these efforts. The group’s de-facto leader, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was tasked with identifying and cancelling contracts collectively worth billions of dollars. The cuts, which Musk said amounted to $200 billion, included 29 DEI training grants through the Department of Education totalling $101 million DOGE claimed. In April 2025, the Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, purged nearly 400 books from the U.S. Naval Academy library that it claimed related to DEI.
Musk left DOGE at the end of May 2025, following the end of his 130-day stint as a special government employee. According to Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor, DOGE ceased to exist as a “centralized entity” as of November 2025.
These sweeping cancellations extended to NEH funding. Of the 1,163 grant proposals DOGE analyzed via ChatGPT for DEI-related content, 1,057 were flagged, and just 42 were kept.
NEH cuts appeared to go beyond DEI
Some of the cancelled grants appear to have little to do explicitly with DEI. ChatGPT appeared to flag a project on literary agents and the corporate structure of the publishing industry as DEI, as well as a center for AI ethics, including for research on “AI-based technologies for eldercare,” and a project to collect resources on the history of Italian-American immigrants.
According to the spreadsheet, 11 grants ChatGPT analyzed related to installing updated HVAC equipment, but just two, including the High Point Museum proposal, were flagged as DEI. The second, asking for funding to improve building infrastructure of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont to address climate change, was flagged as DEI for “addressing environmental sustainability in cultural heritage preservation.”
Michael McDonald, acting chairman of the NEH appointed by the Trump administration, appeared to indicate the cuts went beyond DEI. In an email included in court filings, McDonald wrote to to DOGE staffer Fox that many of the projects on the chopping block were “harmless when it comes to promoting DEI.”
“But you have also told us that in addition to canceling projects because they may promote DEI ideology, the DOGE Team also wishes to cancel funding to assist deficit reduction,” he said. “Either way, as you’ve made clear, it’s your decision on whether to discontinue funding any of the projects on this list.”
McDonald did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
But the outcome of these cuts may have had little impact on the federal deficit DOGE set out to reduce. Cavanaugh, one of the DOGE staffers tasked with overseeing these cuts, said in deposition pertaining to the recent lawsuit the advisory failed to slash the government’s budget gap.
“Did you reduce the federal deficit?” the attorney asked.
“No, we didn’t,” Cavanaugh said.
