A Manhattan federal judge has ordered video recordings of deposition testimony from two former officials at the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, pulled from public view after clips of the footage raced across social media and stirred up heavy attention. The videos were posted by plaintiffs in consolidated lawsuits over the abrupt cancellation of National Endowment for the Humanities grants as part of the discovery record, and short excerpts quickly spread across various platforms. The court is set to take up the dispute at a hearing next week.
Scholars pull hours of footage after interim court order
The American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association had originally posted the deposition videos and related exhibits to make the discovery record publicly accessible. After receiving an interim order from the court, the groups moved fast to make the footage private, telling readers that “we have taken the video depositions down.” According to the American Council of Learned Societies, the recordings were removed while the court considers the government’s request that the videos not remain publicly available.
Depositions reveal staff used ChatGPT to flag NEH grants
The sworn testimony includes video-recorded depositions of Justin Fox and Nathan Cavanaugh, and the transcripts show staff describing how a large language model was used to screen NEH grant descriptions. In his January deposition, Fox acknowledged running more than a thousand grant descriptions through ChatGPT and said the tool helped highlight phrases he believed were tied to diversity, equity and inclusion. The transcript also shows Fox characterizing one project as “focused on Jewish cultures and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture.” Those exchanges appear in the plaintiffs’ exhibits, including materials hosted by the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Historical Association, which form part of the official case record.
Justice Department pushes to block public posting as hearing looms
The Justice Department filed an emergency submission arguing that the depositions had been improperly posted and telling the court that at least one witness had already faced significant harassment, including threats, according to The New York Times. Judge Colleen McMahon responded with a short interim restriction and set a Tuesday hearing to decide whether the videos should stay public. For now, that move has taken the most-viewed clips out of circulation while the court weighs the government’s safety and confidentiality concerns against the plaintiffs’ arguments for public access.
Legal stakes and what comes next
The fight underscores a familiar tension in federal discovery practice: courts can shield witnesses and sensitive information by limiting the spread of deposition materials, even when one side is pushing to air discovery in full. The consolidated cases already operate under protective-order procedures and multiple discovery rulings in the Southern District of New York, and the upcoming hearing will determine whether the deposition videos remain offline or return to wider circulation. Tuesday’s session is expected to set the immediate ground rules for how, and whether, the public can access the footage, with the docket and filed transcripts providing the backbone of whatever the court decides.
