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... U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon declared the terminations unlawful, concluded that the DOGE staffers lacked the authority to make those decisions, and blocked the Trump administration from carrying out the grant terminations.

"There can be no serious dispute that the review process implemented by DOGE did not conform to, or even resemble, NEH's ordinary grant-review process," Judge McMahon wrote.

ABC News has previously reported on the depositions at the center of the case, where two former DOGE staffers described using ChatGPT and DEI keywords to carry out massive cuts. Judge McMahon rebuked their actions, finding that DOGE "blatantly used protected characteristics as criteria for grant termination."

"Treating Black civil-rights history, Jewish testimony about the Holocaust, the oft-forgotten Asian American experience, the shameful treatment of the children of Native tribes, or the mere mention of a woman as a marker of lack of merit or wastefulness is not lawful," she said. ...