YES!! This Judge Just Ordered that Videos of DOGE Bros being Deposed *Can* be Publicly Posted - Much to the Administration's Chagrin!

And I Also Have Their Transcripts for You!

This order stems from a lawsuit that was filed by the Authors Guild over DOGE terminating many grants that had already been awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

First, in another, contemporary lawsuit filed by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association (I promise you this is relevant) there is this great explanation of events:

"NEH’s 60-year history of fostering the humanities came to a crashing halt earlier this month, at the hands of the United States DOGE Service (“DOGE”). Two DOGE operatives who have been hopping from small agency to small agency to dismantle the agencies, Defendants Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, arrived at NEH to do the same. According to accounts of former or current NEH staff, these operatives demanded lists of open NEH grants and then indiscriminately terminated the vast majority of the grants. According to former or current NEH staff, Cavanaugh and Fox did not even bother having NEH officials effectuate their work; Cavanaugh and Fox themselves emailed nearly 1,500 NEH grantees from a “Grant_Notifications@nehemail.onmicrosoft.com” email address, notifying the grantees that their awards had been terminated. NEH’s Acting Chairman Michael McDonald actually admitted to staff a day after the grant terminations that “they”—DOGE—had written the termination letters and that he was not even aware of the full scope of the terminations. According to former or current NEH staff, Cavanaugh and Fox subsequently demanded that NEH mass terminate its staff, resulting in the abrupt issuance of reduction-in-force notices to roughly 75% of its workforce."

Wow!

Ok, back to the Authors Guild lawsuit. The day after the Authors Guild lawsuit was filed it was *consolidated* with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) lawsuit, as it was related. So it's important to note that *both* lawsuits are being heard in tandem by the same judge, Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York.

The plaintiffs in the Authors Guild lawsuit deposed some of the DOGE bros, including Nathan Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, and also Michael McDonald, that acting NEH Chairman. Those depositions were videoed.

Then the *American Council of Learned Societies* co-plaintiff, the American Historical Association, posted the videos of those depositions on YouTube.

And the government kind of lost their mind, and requested Judge McMahon to order that the videos be taken down, which she did. But only temporarily until she could hear and consider the issue.

Upon considering the facts and the issue, Judge McMahon decided that those videos *could* be posted publicly, because they were items of substantial public interest in terms of how the public's government is being run, and also the government had not previously made a motion, let alone a compelling case, that they needed to be sealed or otherwise confidential. As the Court explains:

"Here, the testimony in the videos concerns the conduct of public officials acting in their official capacities – a context in which the public interest in transparency and accountability is at its apex. That interest weighs against the imposition of a broad, post hoc restriction on dissemination."

The Court goes on to other reasons that it is not going to grant the government's request, and that it *is* going to allow the videos to be posted publicly.

And I have the transcripts of the video depositions for you (the videos total 25 hours or so of viewing), and the link to the videos themselves is down at the bottom of this post.

Notes from the Front members: the letter from the government beseeching the judge to make it stop, the order saying "no way", and the transcripts of the depositions are below.

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And here is the link to the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtafkoYGge2LHfM4tHkrxdfuGrqz_iEbp