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Comment by helterskelter

5 hours ago

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they thought it was a DEI thing.

If the 20-something’s at DOGE proved anything last year, the keyword “black” associated with grant funding probably put the research on a list of DEI cuts.

  • I don't know why you're getting downvoted. This is exactly the kind of expertise and competence we have in the Administration right now. It is totally believable that they would do a substring search for "black" and "trans" and defund black hole research and transistor science.

    • It is a little impressive how actively bad they are at this.

      I haven't had that much respect for Elon since he called the cave diver a pedophile, but something I didn't realize until the 2025 administration started is how lazy everyone involved with it is. As far as I can tell, no one in that administration has, at any point in their life, ever examined any of their own opinions or actions, or looked up the "why" of any of the programs that they declared as "wasteful".

      That or they're just idiots. Tough to say.

    • They have said in depositions that they just did substring searches or fed lists to chat gpt, it’s not even a question.

  • This is getting downvoted, but it's actually true. DOGE repeatedly used naive keyword searches to kill funding for projects that often had nothing to do with DEI.

    > Among them was a $349,000 grant to replace an aging HVAC system at the High Point Museum in North Carolina. “Improving HVAC systems enhances preservation conditions for collections, aligning with the goal of providing greater access to diverse audiences,” the ChatGPT DEI rationale stated.

    > Another federal employee, whose primary job function is managing relations with private equity-held businesses, was placed on administrative leave "pursuant to the President's executive order on DEIA," per a dismissal memo reviewed by BI. https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-wrongly-flagged-jobs-pr...