The Removed DOGE Deposition Videos Have Already Been Backed up Across the Internet

The DOGE deposition videos a judge ordered removed from YouTube on Friday after they had gone massively viral have since been backed up across the internet, including as a torrent and to the Internet Archive. The videos included DOGE members unable or unwilling to define DEI; discussing how they used ChatGPT and terms such as “black” and “homosexual” to flag grants for termination but not “white” or “caucasian,” and acknowledgements that despite their aggressive cuts they failed to achieve the stated goal of lowering the government deficit.

[It’s] an example of the “Streisand Effect,” a phenomenon where trying to suppress information often results in the information spreading further.

The depositions come from a lawsuit the Modern Language Association, American Council of Learned Societies, and American Historical Association brought against the National Endowment for the Humanities and others over its cutting of hundreds of millions of grants. DOGE members Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh were a driving force behind those cuts. The deposition videos, which the MLA uploaded to YouTube earlier this month, included depositions of Fox, Cavanaugh, and NEH officials Adam Wolfson and Michael McDonald.