Elon Musk holds up a chainsaw onstage during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, US, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard

The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) relied on the ChatGPT large language model program when deciding to cut grants for Jewish-related history programs, including one focused on violence against women during the Holocaust, according to a new class-action lawsuit.

DOGE staffer Justin Fox is named as one of the defendants in the suit filed in US federal court on Friday by the Authors Guild, which alleges that he was the one who developed the method of using ChatGPT prompts to determine which grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) — also a defendant — to cut in the name of eliminating any programs related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Fox said in a deposition that he regarded any grant related to a minority group as qualifying as “DEI” and thus up for elimination. When asked about a grant he chose to cancel related to violence against women during the Holocaust, he responded, “It’s a Jewish — specifically focused on Jewish culture and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture.” Fox added, “It’s inherently related to DEI for that reason.”

The Trump administration has made a point of targeting DEI programs, especially on university campuses, arguing they foster bigotry by replacing merit with identity-based preferences. Many Jewish groups have criticized DEI initiatives for often excluding Jews, ignoring antisemitism, or characterizing Jews as white “oppressors” rather than as a historically oppressed minority group.

The lawsuit alleges that Fox and his fellow DOGE staffer Nathan Cavanaugh “made and executed the termination decision without any legal authority conferred by Congress. There is no jurisdictional barrier to vacating these unlawful terminations, and permanent relief is warranted.”

One of the projects targeted by DOGE was a translation project titled In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers From the Soviet Union, which the lawsuit describes as “a critical, annotated translation into English of Yiddish and Russian works written in the aftermath of the most significant Jewish tragedy of the 20th century.”

ChatGPT put the book on the chopping block, stating that “this anthology explores Jewish writers’ engagement with the Holocaust in the USSR.”

According to the suit, the DOGE cuts “are unconstitutional several times over. The record establishes, without genuine factual dispute, that the terminations violated the First Amendment by targeting grants for their viewpoints and perceived political associations; that they violated the equal protection guarantee by classifying grants based on race, sex, and other constitutionally protected characteristics.”

DOGE also allegedly targeted Catholic efforts to promote Holocaust studies. The suit notes that another grant Fox and Cavanaugh chopped was support for the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University.

In a deposition, NEH’s acting chair Michael McDonald said he did not know DOGE had relied on ChatGPT and rejected including Holocaust-related grants under DEI. He also claimed DOGE ignored his disagreements. DOGE possessed the final say about which projects to cut.

In response to the question “In your view, does this grant relate to DEI?” McDonald answered “no.” When the lawyer followed up with “would you consider this to be wasteful spend?” he replied “I would not, no.”

Since the NEH’s founding in 1965, the agency has provided over $6 billion in grants to fund over 70,000 projects in all 50 states.

The lawsuit details that Fox and Cavanaugh lacked “any relevant background in the humanities, public or private grant administration, peer review, or government service of any kind prior to joining the administration.”

According to the filing, the two DOGE staffers met with McDonald and Assistant Chair for Programs Adam Wolfson on March 12. However, Fox and Cavanaugh “entirely controlled the process of selecting grants to terminate and executing the terminations — their approach was top-down, viewpoint- and race-based, and indifferent to the views of NEH leadership or the ordinary processes of grant administration.”

DOGE’s mastermind, billionaire Elon Musk, has a professional rivalry with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT.

Musk faced multiple controversies last year involving alleged antisemitism, Nazis, and the Holocaust. Following his decision to make a gesture at a Jan. 20 rally which many interpreted as resembling a “Sieg Heil”-style salute, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) initially defended the billionaire before criticizing his choice to promote Holocaust humor on his X social media platform.

“We’ve said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it. Elon Musk, the Holocaust is not a joke,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO and National Director, wrote on X in response to Musk.

Musk faced criticism days later when addressing a gathering of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, where he said, “There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.” Critics decried the comments, arguing they minimized or dismissed the Holocaust.

“The remembrance and acknowledgement of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping the German society,” Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust, said in response to Musk on X. He warned that not focusing on learning lessons from the past is “an insult to the victims of Nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany.”

In July, following an upgrade to Musk’s ChatGPT rival Grok, the program began promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and in one instance labeled itself “MechaHitler.”

Two months later, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) released a report revealing the rise of antisemitism on X.

The report utilized OpenAI’s since-discontinued GPT-4o model and drew on a year-long investigation to find that “679,000 posts sampled violate X’s policies on antisemitism, and posts identified as antisemitic got 193 million views in the 11 months of this report, despite X’s promises to limit their visibility. Also, antisemitic conspiracies appear to perform disproportionately well on X, constituting 59% of posts in the sample but 73% of likes.”

The report noted that X had allowed for the rise of so-called “antisemitic influencers” and that  “approximately one third of all likes on antisemitic posts were on posts shared by just 10 antisemitism ‘influencers.’ 9 out of these 10 ‘antisemitism influencers’ have more followers on X than any other platform, and 6 out of the 10 are verified on X. 3 out of the 10 profit from paid subscriptions on X.”

Amid the criticism, Musk has denied accusations of antisemitism and said his priority is to make X a bastion of free speech. He visited Israel in late 2023, weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of the Jewish state, and Auschwitz in January 2024. Following the latter trip, Musk said he was “frankly naive” about antisemitism and described himself as “Jewish by association.”

The Tesla CEO and X owner vowed to wear around his neck a dog tag reading “Bring Them Home” that was given to him by a parent of one of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza until all the captives were returned home.

Soccer Football – FIFA Club World Cup – Group D – Esperance de Tunis v Chelsea – Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US – June 24, 2025, General view of the FIFA logo before the match. Photo: REUTERS/Lee Smith

FIFA Chief Operating Officer Heimo Schirgi said the 2026 World Cup is “too big” to postpone and will proceed as planned despite the ​ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Schirgi made the comments while speaking on Monday outside construction of the International Broadcast Center, which is located inside the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and will serve as a hub for international coverage of the World Cup. Schirgi was asked about Iran as it remains unclear if the country will participate in World Cup, after the US and Israel launched joint airstrikes against the Islamic Republic that led to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other high-ranking Iranian officials. Iran has retaliated with strikes against Israel and civilian areas across the Middle East.

“At some stage, we will have a ​resolution, and the World Cup will go on, obviously,” Schirgi replied, according to ⁠NBC 5 in Dallas. “The World Cup is too big, and ​we hope that everyone can participate that has qualified.”

FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafstrom previously said the organization is closely monitoring the situation in the Middle East ahead of the World Cup in June. Schirgi added that FIFA has been in contact with Iran’s soccer ​federation, but did not provide details ⁠about what was discussed, according to Reuters.

The FIFA ​World Cup will take place across cities in the US, Mexico, and Canada from June 11 to July 19. Iran qualified for the tournament through its participation in the ‌Asian ⁠Football Conference. It is set to compete in Group G at the World Cup and is scheduled to face New Zealand on June 15 and Belgium on June 21, both in Los Angeles, before going head-to-head against Egypt on June 26 in Seattle. Soccer fans from Iran are already barred from entering the United States for the World Cup as part of a travel ban that the Trump administration announced in June.

Smoke rises following an explosion, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 7, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

The United States and Israel pounded Iran on Tuesday with what the Pentagon and Iranians on the ground said were the most intense airstrikes of the war, despite global markets betting that President Donald Trump will seek to end the conflict soon.

Raising the stakes for the global economy, Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said they would block oil shipments from the Gulf unless US and Israeli attacks cease.

“Today will be yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran: the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Pentagon briefing.

Yet with Trump having described the war on Monday as “very complete, pretty much,” investors appeared convinced he would end it soon – before the disruption to global energy supplies worsened the global economy.

An historic surge in crude oil prices on Monday was mostly reversed within a day. Asian and European share prices staged a partial recovery from earlier precipitous falls, and Wall Street bounced to around its levels of late February, before the war.

A source familiar with Israel’s war plans told Reuters the Israeli military wanted to inflict as much damage as possible before the window for further strikes closes, under the assumption Trump could end the war at any time.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said his country was not planning for an endless war and was consulting with Washington about when to stop it.

Iran has refused to bow to Trump’s demand that it let the United States choose its new leadership, naming hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader to replace his father, who was killed on the war‘s first day.

But occasionally contradictory remarks from Trump at a Monday press conference appeared to reassure markets he would stop his war before provoking an economic crisis like those that followed the Middle East oil shocks of the 1970s. He said the US had already inflicted serious damage and predicted the conflict would end before the four weeks he initially set out.

Trump has not defined what victory would look like, but on Monday did not repeat declarations that Iran must let him choose its leader.

Several congressional aides have said they expect the White House to soon request as much as $50 billion in additional funding for the war.

The US used $5.6 billion in munitions in the first two days of strikes against Iran, a source familiar with the information said on Tuesday.

“There is a big question mark over how long people can put up with the costs of this conflict,” said Clionadh Raleigh, CEO of US crisis-monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, or ACLED.

Several senior Iranian officials voiced defiance on Tuesday.

“Certainly, we are not seeking a ceasefire; we believe the aggressor must be struck in the mouth so that they learn a lesson and never again think of attacking dear Iran,” Iran‘s parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, posted on X.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told PBS that Tehran was unlikely to resume negotiations with the US.

The war has effectively halted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes along Iran‘s coast. Some of the world’s biggest producers have run out of storage and cut back output.

After Iran chose its hardline new leader, oil prices briefly surged to nearly $120 a barrel on Monday. But by 1500 GMT on Tuesday, Brent crude had settled back down below $90.

Trump said on Monday that if Iran blocks oil through the strait, “we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world,” he said.

But a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guards said Tehran would not allow “one liter” of Middle Eastern oil to reach the US or its allies while US and Israeli attacks continue.

“We are the ones who will determine the end of the war,” the spokesperson said.

Iran is fighting back but is not tougher than the US military expected before the war, the top US general told reporters on Tuesday, at the same briefing where Hegseth promised the Pentagon’s most intense day of strikes in the 10-day-old conflict.

Asked if Iran was a stronger adversary than he expected when the US military drew up its war plans, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the fight was not harder than expected.

“I think they’re fighting, and I respect that, but I don’t think they are more formidable than what we thought,” Caine told the Pentagon briefing.

Ending the war quickly would appear to preclude toppling Iran‘s leadership, which held large-scale rallies on Monday in support of the new supreme leader.

Many Iranians want change and some openly celebrated the death of the elder Khamenei, weeks after his security forces killed thousands of people to put down anti-government protests. But there has been little sign of protest during the war.

At least 1,270 people have been killed since the US and Israeli airstrikes began on Feb. 28, according to Iranian state media reports.

Scores have also been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon to root out the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, which has fired into Israel in solidarity with Iran. Iran said four of its diplomats were killed in a strike on a hotel in Lebanon on Sunday.

Iranian strikes on Israel have killed 12 people. Iran has struck US military bases and diplomatic missions in Arab Gulf states but also hit hotels, closed airports and damaged oil infrastructure.

Australia will deploy a military surveillance aircraft to the Middle East and send missiles to the United Arab Emirates but will not put troops on the ground in Iran, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday.

Australia‘s military support would help the Gulf countries defend themselves against unprovoked attacks from Iran, Albanese said, stressing Australia was “not a protagonist.”

“Our involvement is purely defensive,” Albanese told reporters. “And it’s in defense of Australians who are in the region as well as in defense of our friends in the United Arab Emirates.”