For anyone wanting more context this comes from a deposition of Nathan Cavanaugh as part of discovery of a lawsuit by the ACLS. They recently filed for a summary judgement
They can't be incompetent. They're young white men, who obviously deserved their role, earned it through merit alone, and were given no social or economic advantages over their peers.
Note the way he brushes off his own attorney's objections, not even looking at or reacting to her, while he discusses why someone who's mass-canceling grants doesn't need any grant-writing experience. Total disdain for any kind of expertise, whether academic or legal.
I was curious about this from another video in relation to this case. I have no legal training, but I think there's no reason the witness would refuse to answer when counsel objects. There's no judge in the room as far as I know. The court handles the objections after the fact, I think, which could potentially have implications on how the trial proceeds.
Again, I have never practiced law, so I may be entirely incorrect. Also, I am not defending the witness or their actions.
In a just world, these incompetent children would be unemployed, unemployable, and have to walk around neighborhoods notifying people they live in the area.
it seems like if these statements that were part of the grants were 1FA protected then they should not have been part of the grants in the first place. since having 1FA protected statements in the grants allows the government to compel speech by favouring grants that make approved statements in the same way they can suppress speech by targeting grants that include disfavoured statements. people were previously claiming certain buzzwords needed to be included in order to hurdle the grant process. of course this is probably completely unworkable in practice since you need some kind of description of the grant and almost anything could be seen as some kind of speech that might be favored or punished for political reasons.
What do you mean by 1FA? It reads like your saying "Grants should not include first-amendment-protected statements," but that is not how the first amendment works. It's passive; speech is protected by default.
What DOGE was doing here effectively erased any non-white person from history. It goes way beyond rolling back "DEI". Essentially they were saying that a project on an incident in history where the participants were white was OK, but a project on a similar incident in history where the participants were black or female or Jewish is not OK because it's "DEI". So for instance, a grant to study labor history through the lens of white coal miners would be OK, but a grant to study labor history through the lens of female Jewish garment workers would get canceled.
(b) “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” means any effort to:
1. Manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of
employees with reference to race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender
identity, or sexual orientation other than to ensure that hiring
is conducted in accordance with state and federal
antidiscrimination laws;
2. Promote or provide preferential treatment or special
benefits to a person or group based on that person’s or group’s
race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual
orientation
Not unique to Bluesky, typical of the far too online crowd. There is plenty of good content on Bluesky, where you can actually have more control over it through the open algos and moderation systems (in ATProto writ large)
"The culture of mediocre white men continues. This is a study in the Dunning-Krueger effect. Too bad these clowns have no subject matter expertise is any area. They don’t even have a fully formed pre-frontal cortex. [...]"
Where is that "targeting" their race? "The culture of mediocre white men continues" to me isn't targeting his race. It's targeting his mediocrity and society's allowing up mediocre white men to succeed easily. They're not saying he's mediocre BECAUSE he's white (which would be the racist part).
Where is that "targeting" their race? "The culture of mediocre Indian men continues" to me isn't targeting his race. It's targeting his mediocrity and society's allowing up mediocre Indian men to succeed easily. They're not saying he's mediocre BECAUSE he's Indian (which would be the racist part).
Disclaimer: I think the root problem being described by the quote is real, and I think the way DOGE/MAGA/etc interpret "DEI" is absolutely just pure, petty hatred with no semblance of reason, even though there is certainly a rational argument against DEI you can make.
That said,
I think your take is a little disingenuous. The way they've used the person's race in the sentence is really common, and we understand in those cases that it may or may not come from a racist place in the writer's heart, and we really only have cues/heuristics/history to go on.
E.g. if I mention that race X commits more crime, the reason I'm saying it and the context of the surrounding text and my tone and wording all inform you of whether I am saying that from a place of honesty (wanting things to be better for everybody, including race X), or a place of hatred for race X.
Generally when a writer inserts a person's race flippantly like in the parent's quote, it comes from a place of pettiness, at least partially (and yes, you can be racist against your own race). In particular, this is a good example of a common format used when speaking sarcastically or bitterly about, specifically, white people (sounds like "a room full of old white men" or "angry white lady"). It's now particularly obnoxious, since its usage has largely outgrown the legitimate grievances which inspired it.
It's important to be extremely careful about this kind of "reverse racism" - yes, the point is that the target race is privileged in some way, so it feels more harmless than "regular" racism. But "reverse racism" becomes "regular racism" very, very fast, and the cute shine drops off of it like a rock. I think we're well into crossing that big fuzzy line at this point (and for the past decade, in fact). I think emotionally intelligent people and good communicators are wary of using "white people" (or any race) in any sentence where it is accompanied by an implied eye-roll.
> Generally when a writer inserts a person's race flippantly like in the parent's quote
It may not have been flippant. There is a contingent of young men, almost always white, who think that minorities now have it easy and white people are the most oppressed group in the US, and that this is why they have trouble getting into the best schools or getting the best jobs. Unqualified affirmative action minorities, they think, took their rightful place.
They never seem to notice that plenty of other white people also got into those school or got those jobs, and that those white people and the minorities who got those admissions or jobs worked very hard for years to get it instead of slacking off like they did and expecting to still make it.
Many of these people have found each other on social media and developed a culture around these beliefs.
In the context of DOGE and its unimpressive staffing I think "culture of mediocre white men" was referring to that group.
As a white man who is mediocre in many things, but blames it on my own laziness or lack of talent in those areas, that is the first thing I thought they were talking about.
> It's important to be extremely careful about this kind of "reverse racism" - yes, the point is that the target race is privileged in some way, so it feels more harmless than "regular" racism. But "reverse racism" becomes "regular racism" very, very fast, and the cute shine drops off of it like a rock.
Except it doesn't. White people aren't being rounded up by ICE. White people aren't disproportionately represented in prisons. White people have more space to breathe in America - in effect, to be mediocre - than their peers.
Go watch the deposition tapes. This young man soullessly enjoys demolishing anything DEI aka anything that doesn't benefit or identify with his own race, sexuality or gender. And he does this from a position of power.
Reverse racism is not a thing. Racism is not simply an individual's prejudice. There are two words for a reason. Racism is not merely racial prejudice.
When someone in the federal government creates an exclusive program to erase white history, then that would be reverse racism. When only white people fear the cops as much as other minorities do today that would be reverse racism. When the Supreme Court says if a white person is at a home depot and speaks like a white person ICE has reasonable suspicion to detain them while other races get to go about their business that would be reverse racism.
What isn't cute is your equating childish, powerless online comments with what racism is - which is beyond individual or even aggregated racial prejudice. It is the institutionalization of said prejudice. The old American South wasn't racist merely because white people made mean, petty comments. It was because the entire society was weaponized for the exclusive benefit of the white race. The vestiges of that live on today, and clearly some among us want to take us farther back still.
With everything going on your focus on people calling out his white mediocrity, which frankly, is blatantly obvious and not racist at all is suspect. It suggests you think just pointing out someone's race is itself inherently racist. Which again, demeans the actual meaning of the term.
Also I missed this bit:
> It's now particularly obnoxious, since its usage has largely outgrown the legitimate grievances which inspired it.
That says everything I need to know about you. Here's another term for you to consider: white fragility. No need for a definition, I wager you need only consult a mirror.
I think this mostly is talking past what I said. Not that your points are not legitimate - just not in the context of what I'm saying. I agree with 90% of your comment in a void.
I can at least clarify one thing:
Yes, "reverse racism" doesn't exist, which is why I put it in quotes. I'm using it as a colloquial shorthand for "racism against traditionally privileged races", i.e. white people.
I’m no big fan of DOGE but our fiscal trajectory is utterly unsustainable, much more nation destroying than the particular cuts being mentioned here. I hate that it is now a republican talking point, but we do need a focus on raising revenue and reducing expense — and there is no easy ‘fraud’ win on expense, most of these are on real things that big coalitions of people want but we cannot afford without a large increase in revenue-as-%-GDP (ie. middle & working class tax increases), inflation (effective middle & working class tax increases), or a technological productivity boom.
Reducing defense spending by a fractional amount will have more of an impact than completely eliminating science spending altogether. The Iran tally is up to what, $11b now after a single week?
Defense is 12% of federal spending, not 52%. Definitely a bigger impact & waste than science budgets, I agree - but even cutting 100% of it would not close our hole. As I said, I’m no big fan of DOGE — but the problem is a real one despite the common tendency to put fingers in our ears or propose non-solutions, whether of the ‘tax the rich’, ‘cut DEI spending’, or ‘end all military expenditures’ variety. Not a single one of those or combination gets us there. We have to make real hard choices.
Those numbers still scale whether you're talking about total or discretionary spending, which means science/grants are an even smaller fraction of the 3%.
Why start cutting from the smallest piece of the pie? My point is that defense spending is already outsized and increasing while we cut science spending. Instead of increasing it, why not cut it and provide 100x the savings before cutting science spending? Doesn't seem like such a hard choice.
Sure, I think we should significantly scale back on defense. I hope you also support cutting social security & medicare as well though -- and also tax increases. Otherwise, we're cooked.
Going to be hard to cut into these, and the middle/working class is shrinking as wealth concentrates and wealth inequality expands. Perhaps if there weren't so many middlemen taking slices w/o providing value...
The fuckwit in the video is personally responsible for crushing the productivity boom. Higher education is, or at least was, one of America's chief export industries.
But why would be megacorp and billionaire tax increases off the table? You didn't even mention it... And before someone points out that they pay - yes they pay _something_ then get tax cuts or legal loopholes and in the end they don't really pay.
https://www.acls.org/acls-aha-mla-lawsuit-discovery-material...
https://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/247-Memo-of-...
It doesn't appear that DOGE itself or the individuals is facing any kind of legal consequence here.