JTA — The US Department of Government Efficiency’s cancellation last year of the majority of federal humanities grants, including to several Jewish projects, was unlawful and unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

In her 143-page ruling, US District Judge Colleen McMahon called out the agency created by President Donald Trump specifically for its targeting of Jewish projects, including Holocaust research.

“At a time when the specter of antisemitism has reemerged from the shadows, for our Government to deem a project about Jewish women disfavored because it centered on ‘Jewish cultures’ and ‘female’ voices is deeply troubling,” wrote McMahon, who was appointed by president Bill Clinton in 1998. She was referring specifically to a canceled “project on Jewish women subjected to slave labor during the Holocaust.”

Appointees to DOGE, originally overseen by Elon Musk, swiftly overhauled multiple federal agencies in early 2025. That included the National Endowment for the Humanities, where DOGE personnel canceled a wide swath of grants by using the artificial-intelligence software ChatGPT to identify projects they deemed “DEI” — shorthand for diversity, equity and inclusion.

A lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and a consortium of scholarly groups found during court proceedings that many Jewish grants were classified as “DEI” under DOGE’s rubric. At the same time, the NEH followed up its widespread grant cancellation by awarding its largest grant ever, $10.4........

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