Politics

Judge Rules DOGE’s Cancellation Of NEH Grants Was Unconstitutional

Published

1 month ago

May 9, 2026

The Trump administration’s cancellation of more than $100 million in humanities grants to scholars, writers, research groups and other organizations was unconstitutional, and the Department of Government Efficiency had no authority to end the funding, a federal judge in New York ruled on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan sided with The Authors Guild, several other groups and several people who had their grants canceled and sued DOGE and the National Endowment for the Humanities. McMahon permanently barred the administration from terminating the grants and criticized DOGE’s use of artificial intelligence in nixing the funding.

Government lawyers had argued that the cuts of more than 1,400 grants of congressionally approved funds were legal moves to implement President Donald Trump’s directives, eliminate grants associated with diversion, equity and inclusion and reduce discretionary spending under the administration’s priorities.

The White House and Department of Justice, which defended against the lawsuit, did not immediately return emails seeking comment Thursday evening. It was not immediately clear if an appeal was planned.

McMahon said the government violated the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection right, and DOGE did not have the lawful authority to cancel the grants. She wrote, for example, that it was “a textbook example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination” when officials canceled the grants based on DEI.

“The public interest favors permanent relief,” McMahon wrote in her ruling. “The public has a strong interest in ensuring that federal officials act within the bounds set by Congress and the Constitution.”

Several groups that sued the government, including the American Council of Learned Societies, American Historical Association and Modern Language Association, hailed the decision in a joint statement.

“This ruling in an important achievement in our effort to restore the NEH’s ability to fulfill the vital mission with which Congress charged it: helping to create and sustain ‘a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry’ through the humanities,” said Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association.

Yinka Ezekiel Onayemi, an attorney for the Authors Guild, called the grant cancellations “a direct assault on constitutional free speech and equal protection.”

“We’re pleased with the Court’s decision, which vindicates our clients: the brilliant academics, writers, and institutions doing work that is deeply important to our democracy,” Onayemi said in a statement. “It also reaffirms that Congress’s 60 year old commitment to the humanities cannot be dismantled by an overreaching executive.”

The judge scrutinized how government officials classified grant projects as DEI and used ChatGPT to target them for funding cuts. In one case, she said officials, using the AI platform, labeled as DEI an anthology titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union.” She also listed numerous other examples.

McMahon also rejected the government’s argument that there was no constitutional problem because any viewpoint classification was ChatGPT’s doing, and not the government’s.

“ChatGPT was the Government’s chosen instrument for purposes of this project, and DOGE’s use of AI to identify DEI-related material neither excuses presumptively unconstitutional conduct nor gives the Government carte blanche to engage in it,” she wrote.

The grant cancellations were announced in April 2025, three months after Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” In February 2025, Trump issued another executive order implementing DOGE’s “cost efficiency initiative.”

Michael McDonald, then the acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, sent letters to grant recipients informing them that their grants were canceled.

In a letter to one organization on April 1, 2025, he wrote, “The NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.”

Many of the canceled grants were awarded during the Biden administration, and only about 40 grants awarded by that administration were spared from the cuts, the judge wrote.

McMahon wrote that while a new administration may pursue lawful funding priorities, “it has no license to suppress disfavored ideas.”

In a temporary block of the grant cancellations issued last year that raised First Amendment and other issues, the judge said the “defendants terminated the grants based on the recipients’ perceived viewpoint, in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas.”

Politics

The small-town voters deciding the UK’s future are demanding change, our focus group found

Published

42 minutes ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

ASHTON-IN-MAKERFIELD, England — Voters in perhaps the most consequential special election ever held in Britain are angry, and they really want someone to feel their pain.

That’s the clear verdict from a special focus group by Public First for Blue Light News of voters in Makerfield, the former mining area in northwest England whose June 18 vote could determine the next prime minister.

Some in the group said Andy Burnham, the Labour candidate who is hot favorite to succeed party leader Keir Starmer as PM if he can get himself back into Parliament, might make a difference. But the overwhelming mood during the 90-minute conversation in the Golden Lion pub was one of deep cynicism and bitterness: Life in 2026 is unfair, miserably expensive, and only getting worse, they said.

The goal of Wednesday’s focus group was to get a deep understanding of life in Makerfield — and how voters there are thinking about next week’s by-election. The voters had a mix of political histories and leanings, with longtime Labour voters sitting with supporters of right-wing parties and people who were undecided. But all expressed remarkably similar concerns about the cost of living, immigration, public safety and frustration about an increasingly unequal society.

“These were not a group of people that were thrilled about anything that was going on in Westminster,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First, who moderated the discussion.

Can Burnham overcome that deep disillusionment with the political system? Or will Nigel Farage’s hard right Reform UK party tap into the anger at “two tier” Britain and eject center-left Labour from a seat it has held for decades?

Here are the key takeaways from Blue Light News’s Makerfield focus group:

Starmer’s Labour Party has let them down

There was no love for Starmer — and some even felt there was no real difference between his two-year old government and the center-right Conservatives who held power for the previous 14 years. Not one of the nine people in the group said they thought he’d done a good job as prime minister.

And Labour’s party brand has been damaged as a result.

Tom, a father who is planning to vote Reform, said Labour had always claimed to stand for working-class people — but with the cost of daily essentials now punishingly high for everyone in the room and no relief in sight, “How are they for the working class anymore?”

Daily life is too expensive

The participants easily rattled off the exact prices they‘ve watched increase: The cost of living — from a fast-food meal to rent, to a family trip to the cinema — has risen rapidly and become unsustainable for many people in Makerfield, they said. Family holidays they could afford in the past, even for people working full time, are “just a dream” now, one person added.

Jenny, who is retired, said the cost of living has become “terrible.”

Paul, a father who works three jobs, often from 7:30 a.m. until 4 a.m. the next morning, is struggling, and feels let down. “No one should work 60 hours a week and not be able to have a nice life,” he said. “It’s a joke.”

Paul (right) said he works three jobs and feels let down.

They’re gloomy about politics

Few in the group could point to a political leader of the last 10 years who they felt had made a positive impact on their lives.

Peter, who usually votes Conservative, praised David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum on Brexit 10 years ago. A couple of participants went further back — almost 20 years — to name Tony Blair, who ushered in a Labour government in 1997 after almost two decades of Conservative control, as the last PM who delivered for them.

But most had little confidence that any of today’s politicians would make a difference.

“No government is going to change it,” said Paul. “They’re all crooks, mate. Biggest gangsters in the world.”

Bob, who is in his 90s, added: “I’ve not met a bloody good one yet to be honest.”

They’re very upset about immigration

Farage’s Reform UK is surging ahead in national polls and local elections across the country and is in with a chance of taking Makerfield from Labour. Tackling immigration is his signature policy, and it is clearly a huge concern to participants in the Blue Light News group.

The three-letter acronym they kept coming back to was “HMOs.” It stands for Houses in Multiple Occupation — and that means by migrants, in the perception of the focus group.

The concern, the Makerfield voters said, is that landlords and developers are turning homes into residences not for existing local families to live in but for newly arrived immigrants — who are not related to each other — to share. They fear that pushes up rent prices for people who have been living in the area for many years and changes the nature of their community, which is 95 percent made up of people from a “White British” background.

Participants also said they believed many illegal migrants were overwhelming the local health service, making it harder for taxpaying residents to get medical care.

Farage is winning converts who want change

With their anger at the status quo — and demand for a change in their lives and the country’s direction — several focus group participants said they’re increasingly looking to Reform UK.

“I’ve always voted Labour. This is the first time I’m not voting Labour, I’m voting Reform,” said Tom, who is married with two children and works full-time. “They are pushing big on immigration, which is one of our biggest factors.” Reform is not perfect, he said, “it’s more how bad the country’s got over the years with Labour in charge. There needs to be change.”

Dan, another local father who works but struggles to make his money last, said he’d also be switching from Labour to Reform: “I think the country just needs a bit of a shakeup, even if it’s just for one term.”

Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage speaks at a press conference for the Reform candidate Robert Kenyon ahead of the Makerfield by-election.

Crime is a big worry

Crime and disorder seems to be rising up their agenda. A knife attack in the street in Belfast this week, which sparked protests and violent disorder, was at the top of many participants’ minds. They raised fears about crime locally, too, including “feral kids” who harass people in the streets and lead some residents to feel unsafe while out with their families.

There are now fewer police on the streets and they don’t tend to care much about incidents in the constituency’s biggest town, Ashton-in-Makerfield, participants said.

Life isn’t fair in “two-tier” Britain

For the right in British politics, it is now an article of faith that the country is suffering from a “two tier” system in which ordinary Brits miss out, often thanks to politically correct decisions that police and others take to satisfy equality laws.

Farage and Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch have both seized on high-profile cases in recent days to make this point, and in Blue Light News’s focus group, it had clearly landed — even among some who are going to vote Labour.

The participants in the focus group represented a mix of backgrounds and political identities.

“We need to come up with a better system that makes it fair for everybody. It is a two-tier system here,” said Peter, the local butcher, who is switching this time from the Conservatives to vote for Labour’s Burnham.

Many in the group agreed that the problem was not just policing, but also a wider sense of unfairness — that places like London and even Manchester get all the money and attention, leaving towns like Ashton to struggle.

“A lot of the politics, like Andy has said, has been Londonised. We need somebody from up north,” Peter said.

Traffic jams and warehouses

Alongside immigration from overseas, the changing nature of the area and its “close-knit” local community was a worry for many in the group. In particular, they raised concerns that plans to build hundreds of new homes and five “super unit” warehouses would lead to a huge increase in traffic that the already clogged road network would be unable to handle.

The green landscape around Ashton is highly prized, and several people in the group said they did not want fields to be built on, turning their area into another endless suburb like Liverpool or Manchester.

Andy Burnham stands in front of supporters during the launch of his campaign as Labour’s candidate for the Makerfield by-election.

‘Andy cares’

Burnham’s record as Mayor of Greater Manchester, the broader area, was seen as a big plus, even by people who were not likely to vote for him.

Participants in the group readily named his achievements at improving local transport infrastructure and hiring more police. Two even said they had in the past gone directly to Burnham with problems they or their families were facing and he had fixed them.

Most of all, there was a sense that Burnham, who grew up nearby and previously represented people in the area in parliament, understands their lives. Bob, Peter, Emma and Mandy all said they were planning to vote for Burnham next week.

“He just comes over as if he cares and as if he wants to sort the country out,” said Mandy, who works part-time as a cleaner and merchandizer. “I just think he seems to be a more down-to-earth person who is looking out for people. He seems more genuine.”

Having someone from the North as prime minister would also help their area, several participants said. “We need better leadership,” added Peter. “We need somebody who cares and I do feel like Andy cares.”