Federal Judge Slams Trump’s DOGE for Unconstitutional Cuts to Jewish Humanities Grants

In a decisive rebuke of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon ruled last Thursday that DOGE’s cancellation of most federal humanities grants, particularly those related to Jewish projects, was unlawful and unconstitutional.

The 143-page ruling highlights DOGE’s disturbing pattern of targeting grants that centered on Jewish culture, Holocaust research, and voices of Jewish women. Judge McMahon, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1998, called out the agency for its “viewpoint discrimination” and warned of “the specter of antisemitism” lurking behind these actions.

DOGE, overseen initially by Elon Musk and created by Trump to slash federal workforce and spending, used AI software ChatGPT to label many humanities grants as “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) projects. This rubric became a tool to cancel a wide range of grants, disproportionately affecting Jewish projects alongside those focused on Black, Native American, Asian American, and women-centered studies.

Among the canceled grants were projects documenting Jewish women subjected to slave labor during the Holocaust, studies of ancient Jewish texts excluded from the Hebrew Bible, and anthologies of Jewish writers from the former Soviet Union. Judge McMahon emphasized that these cancellations were not about wasteful spending but about suppressing particular cultural and historical perspectives.

Meanwhile, DOGE awarded its largest-ever grant of $10.4 million to the Tikvah Fund, a politically conservative Jewish organization, underscoring the administration’s selective favoritism.

The ruling orders the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to reinstate the canceled grants. The NEH has not commented publicly, but the White House pushed back strongly, calling the decision “egregiously wrong” and vowing to fight it, framing the grants as “wasteful federal spending.”

The Authors Guild, which helped bring the lawsuit, praised the ruling as a victory for justice and pledged to ensure all affected grants are restored.

This case shines a harsh light on how the Trump administration weaponized government agencies and AI tools to erase marginalized voices and cultural histories under the guise of efficiency — a clear attack on democratic norms and civil rights that we cannot let stand.