An awkward deposition exposed a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staff member not being able to give a definition of DEI—which is diversity, equity and inclusion—after his main task was eliminating grants deemed as DEI opportunities.
The depositions were part of a lawsuit from various organizations such as the Modern Language Association (MLA), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and American Historical Association (AHA), People reports. The lawsuit claims the federal agency, under the leadership of Elon Musk, used flawed and discriminatory methods in order to target which grants and programs should be eliminated.
Some of the videos from the deposition were released, including one featuring DOGE staffer Justin Fox.
“How do you interpret DEI?” a lawyer asked.
“The EO (executive order) explicitly laid out the details…I don’t remember it off the top of my head,” Fox said.
“I’m asking for your understanding of it,” the lawyer responded.
Fox said, “Yeah, my understanding was exactly what was in the EO.”
When asked if he understood what DEI is “right now,” Fox said, “Yeah… it was exactly what was written in the EO. So anytime that we would look at a grant, through the lens of complying with an executive order, we would just refer back to the EO and assess if this grant had relation to it.”
The EO, titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” pushed for agencies to “coordinate the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the federal government, under whatever name they appear.”
As a result, positive programming and grants for Black women, like the Fearless Fund, were cut.
Fox specifically focused on women when the lawyer asked for the reasoning behind a documentary on female Holocaust survivors being labeled as DEI.
“It’s the gender-based story; that’s inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group,” Fox said. “It’s focusing on DEI principles, gender being one of them… specifically focused on Jewish cultures and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture. It’s inherently related to DEI for those reasons.”
The comments section of the Instagram video from The Neighborhood Talk didn’t take too well with his lack of knowledge. “DEI to them means Black people,” @thejcole22 said.
“They can never answer a simple question. Did he pass high school?” @jeannet_genie said.
At the hands of DOGE leaders, a number of people lost their businesses and their jobs because of the war against DEI. @xojennjones highlighted that not giving an answer sets a tone. “This is not ok. Many people lost their livelihood, and people didn’t get the resources that they needed because of this ignorance,” the user wrote.
It didn’t just stop there. Another staffer, Nathan Cavanaugh, admitted under oath that humanities grants with references to the LGBTQ+ community were flagged simply for using the term, according to the Advocate.
One grant that was highlighted pushed for a public discussion series titled “Examining experiences of LGBTQ military service,” with the goal of bringing veterans and community members together to discuss experiences of marginalized service members, such as women, Black veterans, Native Americans, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people.
Cavanaugh was a little more blunt with his reasoning. When asked why the project was flagged, he said, “Because it explicitly says ‘LGBTQ.’”
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