type: timeline_event
On March 23, 2026, a federal judge reversed the March 13 order that had required plaintiffs to remove viral DOGE deposition videos from YouTube, rejecting the Trump administration's request to permanently block the dissemination of the footage. The court ruled that the public's right to access information about government operations outweighed the administration's arguments that the videos had caused harassment of the DOGE staffers depicted in them.
The ruling restored public access to deposition footage showing DOGE staffers Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox testifying under oath about their use of ChatGPT to evaluate and cancel National Endowment for the Humanities grants. The videos, which had already been viewed millions of times before the original takedown order, showed the staffers describing a process in which a consumer AI tool was given a single vague prompt and its outputs were used — without human review — to cancel more than $100 million in federal grants. Both staffers expressed no regrets about the impact on grant recipients.
The court found that the government had not met the high threshold required to justify a prior restraint on the dissemination of court proceedings. The judge noted that the deposition testimony concerned the actions of government employees carrying out public functions, that the videos had already been widely disseminated before the original order, and that the public interest in understanding DOGE's methods was substantial. The harassment concerns raised by the government, while acknowledged, did not rise to the level that would justify suppressing testimony about how federal funds were being administered.
The reversal was celebrated by press freedom and transparency advocates who had criticized the original takedown as an improper attempt to shield the administration from embarrassment. The continued circulation of the deposition videos ensured that the public could see firsthand how DOGE operated — young staffers with no government experience, using AI tools they did not fully understand, making decisions that affected thousands of institutions and individuals, and expressing no concern about the consequences. The footage had become one of the most potent symbols of the broader critique of DOGE's approach to federal governance.