Judge: DOGE Grant Cuts Discriminatory And Unconstitutional

One of the first things President Donald Trump did upon taking office last year was to appoint Elon Musk as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). To say DOGE was a net negative for American life would be an understatement. While many people are still reeling from the cuts and layoffs that resulted from DOGE, a federal judge ruled that the cuts DOGE made to $100 million in humanities grants were unconstitutional. 

According to PBS News, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan called DOGE’s cuts “blatant viewpoint discrimination.” The lawsuit was filed by several groups and individuals, including the Authors Guild, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association. 

McMahon said that DOGE violated the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection right, and effectively read DOGE for filth in her ruling. “What mattered to DOGE was not whether a grant lacked scholarly merit, failed to comply with its terms, or fell outside NEH’s [the National Endowment for the Humanities] statutory purposes. What mattered was that the grant concerned a ’minority group’,” McMahon wrote.

“DOGE swept in race and ethnicity – including grants concerning Black, Asian, Latino, and Indigenous communities – as well as national origin and immigration status; religion and religious identity (including Jewish, Christian, and Muslim subjects); sex; and sexual orientation, as criteria for grant termination,” the judge added. 

Several of the groups that filed the lawsuit issued a statement celebrating McMahon’s ruling. 

“This ruling is an important achievement in our effort to restore the NEH’s ability to fulfill the vital mission with which Congress charged it: helping to create and sustain ‘a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry’ through the humanities,” said Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association.

The Trump administration has signaled it intends to appeal the ruling. “The district court’s ruling is egregiously wrong,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement sent to the Washington Post. “It conflicts with clear Supreme Court precedent, and provides yet another example of liberal judges trying to reinstate wasteful federal spending at the expense of the American taxpayer. The Trump Administration expects to [be] vindicated as this litigation proceeds.”

DOGE was active for only a few months, but it caused significant damage during that time. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers were unexpectedly laid off last year in a haphazard fashion. There was very little rhyme or reason to the layoffs, leaving the government in the awkward position of having to rehire about 25,000 people who had served in crucial roles. 

“What DOGE did is it cut so big and so deep and so randomly that when the Cabinet secretaries came in, and Elon Musk was gone, they realized that they had to bring some of these people back,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, told PBS News. 

While some people got their jobs back, many didn’t. Those folks were thrust into one of the worst job markets since the Great Recession, with several people telling PBS News that they’re still looking for work. All the confusion, pain, and legal drama brought forth by the DOGE cuts could be justified if they actually did anything to streamline the government or lower the national debt, but that didn’t happen. 

In fact, the U.S.’s national debt surpassed its economic output only one year after the cuts. So much for government efficiency. 

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that DOGE was a racist, poorly run, generally stupid endeavor that did more harm than good. In other words: Elon Musk’s entire brand. 

SEE ALSO:

DOGE Bros Used ChatGPT To Gut DEI, But Couldn’t Define It

DOGE Cuts Kill Georgia Internet Access Program For Black People

Judge Finds DOGE Grant Cuts Were Discriminatory And Unconstitutional was originally published on newsone.com