On Monday a judge said videos of recent depositions from DOGE members can be published online once again. The ruling is something of an about face for Judge Colleen McMahon, who originally ordered plaintiffs in the DOGE-related lawsuit \u201cclaw back\u201d the videos they had published to YouTube. The videos were already massively viral at the time of that ruling, in part because they showed DOGE members Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh unable or unwilling to define DEI, admitting their use of ChatGPT to filter contracts to potentially axe based on words like \u201cBlack\u201d and \u201chomosexual\u201d but not \u201cwhite,\u201d and were broadly one of the first times the public has directly heard from people inside DOGE.\u201cThis decision validates our position that the publication of the videos, which document a process to destroy knowledge and access to vital public programs, was indeed in the public\u2019s interest,\u201d Joy Connolly, president of the American Council of Learned Societies, said in a statement shared with 404 Media. \u201cWe look forward to continuing the pursuit of justice in reclaiming government support for important humanities research, education, and sustainability initiatives.\u201dThe American Council of Learned Societies is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, along with the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association. The organizations are suing Fox, Cavanaugh, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and others for their role in cutting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts they perceived as being DEI-related.In her ruling McMahon wrote, \u201c[T]he testimony in the videos concerns the conduct of public officials acting in their official capacities\u2014a context in which the public interest in transparency and accountability is at its apex [. . .] The subject matter of this testimony\u2014how government officials carried out their official responsibilities\u2014falls squarely within that core public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, added in the joint statement, \u201cWe are pleased that this evidence, which documents the workings of DOGE and the dismantling of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will remain part of the publicly accessible historical record.\u201dPaula Krebs, executive director of the Modern Language Association, said, \u201cWe are pleased to see today’s ruling in defense of the First Amendment rights of all Americans.\u201d The statement added, \u201cThe depositions in this case document what had not before been documented: how DOGE worked to silence projects that tell the American story. This ruling makes clear the public’s stake in understanding the processes that resulted in the near-destruction of the NEH.\u201dThe Modern Language Association uploaded the DOGE depositions to its YouTube channel earlier this month. They quickly went viral after 404 Media and other media outlets clipped segments of the hours of material, including one section in which Fox could not, or would not, define DEI. I personally watched the entire 6 hours of Fox\u2019s deposition, and parts of Cavanaugh\u2019s. The uploaded depositions also include those from NEH officials Adam Wolfson and Michael McDonald.After that coverage, which the government explicitly referenced in a court filing, the government asked the judge to intervene because it said Fox had received death threats, and that the videos could cause harassment and \u201creputational harm.\u201d The judge ordered the plaintiffs to \u201cimmediately take any and all possible steps to claw back the videos of the depositions of the witnesses identified in the Government\u2019s motion.\u201dAt that point, the depositions were no longer available on the plaintiffs\u2019 YouTube channel. But as 404 Media reported, archivists quickly uploaded copies to the Internet Archive and distributed them as a torrent.At the time of writing, the videos are available on the YouTube channels of the American Historical Association and the American Council of Learned Societies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"