The days of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and Elon Musk working as an adviser to US president Donald Trump may well be over, but the controversial cost-cutting department is still making headlines thanks to newly released deposition footage totalling more than 10 hours.
The testimonies from January stem from a lawsuit filed by the Modern Language Association, the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Historical Association – and includes oral evidence from Doge operators Justin Fox and Nathan Cavanaugh.
And it’s comments from Cavanaugh which have caught the attention of social media in particular, as when he was asked if he thought it was inappropriate for a person in their 20s with no experience in grants or federal government to decide which government grants to cancel, he said no.
He said: “I don’t think it’s inappropriate … I think a person can have enough judgment from reading books and being well-informed outside of the traditional experience to make judgment calls about obvious things like a grant that literally lists DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] in its description to know whether it violates an executive order.”
The attorney can then be heard asking: “What books would you have read that would have informed your opinion on what grants to cancel based on DEI or not?”
“There were no books,” Cavanaugh replied.
Ah.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said it was “insane” that the staffers were making decisions on “billions of dollars of grants” based on “their ignorance as well as prejudice”:
Democrat representative Mike Levin called on Musk to “face consequences”:
One account wrote Cavanaugh’s “smugness and lack of empathy for others or moral compass” was “disturbing”:
Another said it was “insane” that his wife was fired by DOGE because her job was considered “too ‘DEI’”:
And a third tweeted that Cavanaugh “couldn’t care less that he was unqualified”:
Meanwhile, Fox struggled to answer a question around what DEI actually is, and said his “understanding” of the term was based on Trump’s executive order targeting the principle – although he said he “can’t remember” what was in said order.
Embarrassing.
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