Three major scholarly groups have sued the National Endowment for the Humanities and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, arguing that the recent mass cancellation of virtually all the agency’s grants violates the law and must be reversed.
The suit, filed on Thursday, was brought by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association and offers new details about how DOGE conducted its work at the humanities endowment.
The endowment’s fate has been in question since March 12, when the former chairwoman, Shelly C. Lowe, a Biden appointee, resigned “at the direction of President Trump” and was replaced by Michael McDonald, a longtime employee and the agency’s general counsel.
Employees from the Department of Government Efficiency started visiting the office soon after, according to the lawsuit. Citing accounts by former or current staff members at the endowment, the lawsuit says that two DOGE employees, Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, asked for a list of all current grants and then “indiscriminately terminated the vast majority” on April 2. Nearly 1,500 grant recipients received cancellation letters that suggested their projects were not in keeping with “the president’s agenda.”
Three weeks later, the agency announced it would be redirecting $17 million of its funding to create the National Garden of American Heroes, a patriotic statuary park that Mr. Trump has made central to his plans for commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence in 2026.
The cancellation letters were not sent from the usual email account used for all the agency’s grant-making activity but from a newly created one on a different server. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claims that although the letters were signed by Mr. McDonald, they were written by Department of Government Efficiency employees.