Huge NYT article on the back story of those two weeks in March/April 2025 when DOGE illegally terminated hundreds of NEH grants. Gift link!!

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/arts/humanities-endowment-doge-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RVA.ha2L.H8O2a8h8JIEt&smid=nytcore-ios-share

March 07, 2026 - 20:34 UTC

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Why did I think they simply canceled all of them. Nope it was discriminatory
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“Equality”?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .”

Are we knocking out the Declaration of Independence?
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These anecdotes distill the attitude pretty succinctly.

Can't study a Klan massacre because it's "Black history" (this would be news to the Klan!). Can't study labor in Nazi concentration camps, because it would "amplify" Jewish voices.
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Just obeying orders. I am sure that will turn out well?!
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Thinking I should use all those in my bio for no reason
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And also some sweeping cancellations like the FPIRI program awards (to JCB, AAS, etc). I don't have words.
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In Russian messaging,
white is black and
black is white.
Now in GOP USA,
it is the same.
www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/eeoc-and-justice-department-warn-against-unlawful-dei-related-discrimination

www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2025-03/One_Pagers_2025-2_%28002%29_508.pdf
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you thought that because the complaint in the Oregon Humanities lawsuit said that! which is also why *I* thought it and how I covered it in the articles I wrote about this last year! Jesus Christ this is a shitshow, did they all just lie in their depositions to make it look less bad????
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Equality and citizenship?So the constitution is too woke?
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These cancellations were so much more horrible for other people than for me personally, as my fellowship was coming to an end. Huge losses to hundreds of people and dozens of long term projects and ongoing relationships. The loss to humanities has been incalculable
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HIRING/PROMOTING:
RACISTS, JAN 6TH ELECTION DENIERS, WHITE NATIONALISTS, CLIMATE DENIERS, NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION (NAR),
END TIMES, GOP LOYALISTS W/O MERIT/TRAINING, DOGE 20+KIDS, UNVETTED, W/O GOV EXP. AMERICA FIRST, HERITAGE FIRST, QANON,
GROYPERS, RUSSIAN TIES-BY FAMILY/SPOUSE, OR DONOR TIES.
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it’s nice that this is being published, but it makes me sooo pissed off at how credulous NYT and others were at the time
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So dispiriting.
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TY for gifting.
Ignorant right-wing techies destroy an organization and studies foundational to our understanding of our history & culture, aided & abetted by a right-wing, “woke”-hating chair put in place by rump.
TY to the orgs behind the suit!
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Sounds like we will have a very busy DOJ in 2028...
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Grand theft
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Enraging.
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The destruction of functional competence is a story that won’t be written because of the destruction of functional competence
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I don't actually disagree with the LLM output - NEH research will be, by it's very nature, more often than not research into under-researched subjects who are likely to have been materialised by history or culture.

But using that output to justify cancellations? Madness.
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And you just know that these limited-thinkers will have seen the LLM produce the output that was requested, and will have thought "see, AI agrees with us".

Much the same way as my printer agrees with me when I print a sheet saying "Tom is incredible and anyone that doesn't think so is wrong".
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this Nate Cavanaugh too, evil
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Thank you for the gift.
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All these DOGE stooges need proper Wikis so we no who they all are.
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That was a HORRIFYING read.

Mostly because it’s what we all thought was happening but there was that shred of hope that things weren’t actually as stupid as they appeared. But of course they were.
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Thank you. Hopefully, someone sometime soon will be working to help organize and produce a 5 million or 20 million WE THE PEOPLE plainfiffs #classaction lawsuit(s), and this may be one more for the reams of evidence.
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