Ex-DOGE Staffer Admits the Whole Thing Was a Total Bust
The DOGE bros responsible for cutting over 317,000 federal jobs and thousands of grants continue to show they had no idea what they were doing and no remorse for the damage done.The depositions of two of the bros, Nathan Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, were published on YouTube last week by the plaintiffs of a suit who hope to restore some of the cuts made to the National Endowment for the Humanities. The nearly 25 hours of depositions are equal parts hilarious and depressing, showing how sloppy Elon Musk’s former staff—most of whom had little experience in government—were in their approach.For all Musk’s bluster about reducing government spending by $1 trillion, federal spending increased with DOGE at the wheel. Cavanaugh outlined the irony perfectly in his deposition when asked whether he regretted that the slashing of grants had cost many people their livelihood.“No,” Cavanaugh said. “I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit.”“OK,” the interviewer said. “Did you reduce the federal deficit?”“No, we didn’t,” Cavanaugh replied.The employees were mocked online for lacking any principles besides “cut every grant that doesn’t relate to white men.” Fox struggled to define DEI at all, and floundered when asked whether he considered a documentary about Jewish women during the Holocaust to be DEI.“It’s a Jewish—specifically focused on Jewish culture and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture,” he said. “It’s inherently related to DEI for that reason.”Both Fox and Cavanaugh used ChatGPT to find grants that fell under the Trump administration’s definition of “radical and wasteful government DEI programs.” The loose guidelines coupled with an imperfect chatbot and sheer idiocy from the bros meant that funding for things such as a new HVAC system for a North Carolina museum or a digital archive for Oregon newspapers were terminated in the purge. Of course, any grant containing the word “BIPOC,” “homosexual,” “LGBTQ,” or “tribal” had almost no shot of survival.The backlash to the depositions has perhaps been too much to take for the DOGE bros. On March 13, a judge ordered that videos of the depositions be taken off the internet. They’re still quite easy to find.