DOGE cancelled $349,000 grant to replace museum HVAC after ChatGPT flagged it as DEI, court documents show

UNITED STATES, March 20 — 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.

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 .