A former member of Elon Musk’s government efficiency team is going viral online after explaining how he helped identify and flag “DEI” grants for termination during his time working inside the federal bureaucracy.
This comes after a massive batch of discovery materials released last week pulled back the curtain on how President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) moved rapidly to protect American taxpayer dollars.
The documents, stemming from a desperate lawsuit filed by left-wing academic groups, reveal the extent of DOGE’s “Small Agencies Team” in gutting the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), terminating a staggering 97 percent of the agency’s grants, according to Inside Higher Ed.
For decades, the NEH has served as a slush fund for far-left activists masquerading as “scholars.” That ended last January when President Trump signed a series of executive orders to shut off the tap for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), gender ideology, and radical environmentalism.
And leading the charge was one of Musk’s sharpest DOGE warriors – 28-year-old tech entrepreneur and patriot Nate Cavanaugh, co-founder of Special, who oversaw small agencies including the NEH.
Cavanaugh, who helped gut 97% of the agency’s grants and slashed 65% of its bloated staff in record time, didn’t hold back in his January 2026 deposition. A viral video of the exchange is blowing up on social media.
In the deposition, a sniveling attorney tried the guilt trip:
ATTORNEY: You don’t regret that people might have lost important income to support their lives?
NATE CAVANAUGH: No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero.
ATTORNEY: Did you reduce the federal deficit?
NATE CAVANAUGH: No, we didn’t.
Classic. The left wants you crying over “lost income” for activists pushing prison abolition and queer theory, while Americans are $36 trillion in debt. Cavanaugh’s response? Priorities.
Then it gets even better. They showed him the “craziest” grants he and colleague Justin Fox flagged:
One: “This is a history of the HIV/AIDS prison movement and its legacies in the United States. My book project narrates how activists fought the convergence of HIV/AIDS and incarceration… and argues that this organizing holds legacies in the prison abolition movement… feminist and queer insights… LGBTQ studies.”
ATTORNEY: Why did you identify this as one of the craziest grants?
NATE CAVANAUGH: Um, because it references, um, feminist and queer insights into prison abolition and LGBTQ studies.
ATTORNEY: Any other reasons?
NATE CAVANAUGH: No.
Another: “Examining Military Service from the Margins: The Complicated Service Discussion Series will bring together veterans and community members to examine the experiences of service members who identify themselves as female, Black, Native American, LGBTQ, or an immigrant, and the dynamics, reasoning, and strength behind serving a country that does not always serve you in return.”
NATE CAVANAUGH: Yes… because it explicitly says LGBTQ.
The attorney kept pushing: Do you have any history in scholarly peer review?
NATE CAVANAUGH: No.
ATTORNEY: So this judgment call was made by you and your personal judgment… to cancel grants based on DEI?
NATE CAVANAUGH: Yes.
Then the killer line, the one proving these 20-something DOGE warriors have more sense than decades of D.C. bureaucrats:
ATTORNEY: Do you think it’s inappropriate in any way that someone in their 20s with no experience with grants or federal government was making personal judgment calls?
NATE CAVANAUGH: No, I don’t think it’s inappropriate.
ATTORNEY: Why not?
NATE CAVANAUGH: I think a person can have enough judgment from reading books and being well-informed outside of traditional experience to make judgment calls about obvious things like a grant that literally lists DEI in its description to know whether it violates an executive order.
ATTORNEY: What books would you have read that would have informed your opinion…?
NATE CAVANAUGH: There were no books.
MIC DROP. No need for woke indoctrination manuals when you can read plain English and spot taxpayer-funded degeneracy a mile away.
WATCH:
One of Musk’s DOGE bros explains how he flagged “DEI” grants for termination pic.twitter.com/XYUGlkd5Y9
— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) March 12, 2026
The post WATCH: Another DOGE Warrior Details in Deposition How He Gutted Radical DEI Grants at NEH and Other Small Agencies appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.