One year after Elon Musk began an unprecedented attempt to eliminate swaths of the federal government, newly released deposition videos are providing a never-before-seen look at two of the people responsible for the largest mass termination of federal grants in the National Endowment for the Humanities’ history.

According to the depositions and other materials released as part of a civil lawsuit related to the funding cuts, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) relied on ChatGPT to identify more than $100 million in grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that were later cancelled.

When President Donald Trump returned to office last January, he empowered Musk to slash federal spending as a lead adviser in the newly created DOGE. Within days, all agencies were directed to put DEI staff on leave and related programs were shuttered.

In lengthy depositions, two DOGE employees — Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh — defended the effort to cut “useless agencies” as part of DOGE’s attempt to reduce the federal deficit.

“You don’t regret that people might have lost important income … to support their lives?” an attorney asked Cavanaugh about the grant cancellations.

“No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero,” Cavanaugh said.

“Did you reduce the federal deficit?” the attorney asked.

“No, we didn’t,” Cavanaugh said.

With backgrounds in tech and finance, neither man worked in government prior to joining DOGE last year. Cavanaugh said they originally determined which grants could be cut based on if they included certain words — like “DEI, DEIA, Equity, Inclusion, BIPAC, LGBTQ” — though the final decision about cuts was up to the head of individual agencies.

“Do you think it’s inappropriate in any way that someone in their 20s with no experience with grants for the federal government was making personal judgment calls about what grants to cancel?” an attorney asked.

“Um, no. I don’t think it’s inappropriate,” Cavanaugh said, arguing that he did not need formal education or experience to make informed judgments.

“So presumably you read some of these books that would have informed you on how to cancel a grant based on DEI,” the attorney asked.

“Um, I did not read a book, um, on how to discern whether a grant includes DEI or not. I read the actual description of the actual grant,” Cavanaugh said.

Fox said they instead turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT to help sift through the thousands of grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

According to court filings, the men prompted ChatGPT by asking, “From the perspective of someone looking to identify DEI grants, does this involve DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters.· Begin with ‘Yes.’ o. ‘No.’ followed by a brief explanation.· Do not use ‘this initiative’ or ‘this description’ in your response.”

Fox was repeatedly pressed by attorneys to explain certain funding decisions, such as defunding a language center — described as a “wasteful, noncritical spend” — or projects related to Black history and civil rights.

“Why is a documentary about Holocaust survivors DEI?” an attorney asked.

“It’s a gender-based story that’s inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group,” Fox said.

According to the depositions and legal documents, the men did not provide a clear definition for DEI or take additional steps to ensure the decisions were not discriminatory — arguing it was not necessary because AI software was not the final decision-maker.

“Did you do anything to ensure that ChatGPT’s perception of DEI as applied here wouldn’t discriminate on the basis of sex?” an attorney asked, prompting another objection.

“It didn’t matter,” Fox said.

DOGE’s efforts in multiple federal agencies and departments last year faced opposition and lawsuits, with critics raising concerns about the group’s effectiveness and its access to sensitive data. 

Both Fox and Cavanaugh defended the funding decisions, arguing the cuts were necessary to reduce the deficit, though they never achieved their goals.

“Did you ever find it problematic that you were, alongside Nate, short-listing for termination projects that had hits on words like Black, homosexual, LGBTQ+?” an attorney asked, prompting an objection and follow up question.

“We were identifying wasteful spend in the government based on administration direction. That was the whole reason we were there, was to find savings,” Fox said, though he acknowledged the deficit was never reduced.

Their work cutting grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities was memorialized in a social media post by DOGE, which vowed that any future grants would be “merit-based and awarded to non-DEI, pro-America causes.”

According to the depositions, some of the saved funds were spent on the National Garden of American Heroes — a sculpture garden to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary.

Federal authorities have arrested a Virginia man accused of unlawfully selling a firearm to the former National Guardsman who authorities said killed an instructor and injured two students in an ROTC class at Old Dominion University on Thursday, according to newly unsealed court records.

Kenya Chapman was charged with false statements and unlawful firearms dealing offenses in a criminal complaint on Friday for his alleged sale of a Glock 44 .22 caliber gun to Mohamed Jalloh, who was previously convicted in 2016 of attempting to provide material support to ISIS — a federal felony that sent him to prison and barred him from being able to legally purchase or possess firearms. 

Jalloh opened fire Thursday on a class of ROTC members at ODU on Thursday morning, authorities said. Just before he began shooting, students reported that he shouted or stated, “Allah Akbar,” according to FBI Special Agent Dominique Evans of the Norfolk field office. 

Other students then subdued and killed Jalloh, the FBI official said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Sources told ABC News one of the students fatally stabbed Jalloh.

The FBI is currently investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism, Evans said.  

Students on the Norfolk, Virginia, campus described the terrifying moments when the gunfire broke out in Constant Hall on Thursday morning.

“Some people were hiding in rooms, people were going on top of the parking garage, hiding under the cars,” said Chris Lathon, a senior, who was in the building during the shooting, though not in the room.

Bryce Patterson, junior at ODU, said: “I’ve never expected something like this to happen in a campus where I was going. Yeah, just a little bit shocked. It’s just like, I don’t know, I have no words.”

A newly unsealed criminal complaint reveals new information about Jalloh, his interactions with his court-assigned probation officer and other details from his background leading up to Thursday’s shooting.

According to the complaint, Jalloh was taking online classes at Old Dominion University this semester and his probation officer had been told by Jalloh that he was living at a residence in Sterling, Virginia, with his sister.

The probation officer’s last reported visit with Jalloh was Nov. 17 of last year, the complaint says. 

Investigators have obtained CCTV footage showing Jalloh park his car on campus yesterday at approximately 9:40  a.m. before the shooting. 

Jalloh, a former member of the Army National Guard, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2017 and released in December of 2024, according to Bureau of Prisons records. He was released early due to completing a substance abuse treatment program, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson told ABC News.

When he pleaded guilty in 2016, Jalloh admitted he had communicated with a member of ISIS who was located overseas, who introduced him to an individual in the U.S. who was actually an FBI confidential informant.

The ISIS member was believed to be actively plotting an attack and believed Jalloh would assist the informant in carrying it out, according to his guilty plea.

During one meeting with the FBI informant, Jalloh was asked about a timeline for an operation and commented that it was better to plan an attack for the month of Ramadan, court records say. 

Prosecutors had recommended Jalloh serve 20 years in prison.

ABC News’ Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.

In a rare move, Cuba’s president has publicly acknowledged that his government was holding secretive talks with the U.S. as President Donald Trump intensifies his pressure campaign against the regime. 

“Cuban officials have recently held talks with representatives of the United States government,” President Miquel Díaz-Canel said during a televised address on Friday. 

“We want to avoid manipulation and speculation,” Díaz-Canel later added, explaining that the talks were still “in their first phase” and that negotiators from both countries were working “to establish an agenda.” 

“As the president stated, we are talking to Cuba, whose leaders should make a deal, which he believes ‘would be very easily made,'” a Trump administration official told ABC News when asked about the Cuban leader’s statements. 

“Cuba is a failing nation whose rulers have had a major setback with the loss of support from Venezuela and with Mexico ceasing to send them oil,” the official continued. 

The Trump administration has been running what amounts to a fuel blockade against Cuba since the end of January, prompting an acute energy crisis on the island. Díaz-Canel said on Friday that no fuel shipments have reached Cuba in over three months. 

The White House has provided few specifics on the state of negotiations with Cuba, but President Trump indicated earlier this month he had charged Secretary of State Marco Rubio with leading the discussions and predicted Cuba was “going to fall pretty soon.” 

“They want to make a deal so badly,” the president said in a phone interview with CNN. “They want to make a deal, and so I’m going to put Marco [Rubio] over there and we’ll see how that works out.” 

Rubio and his top aides meet with representatives of the Cuban government at least half a dozen times in recent months, officials familiar with the conversations tell ABC News. 

Little is known about the contours of any potential deal, but both the president and seasoned diplomats who have worked closely with Cuba for years have signaled they expect to see the regime collapse.

Their strategy for accomplishing that is also unclear; Trump has said there could be a “friendly takeover” of the country, but he also not taken military intervention off the table. 

However, Rubio has indicated the administration might be willing to accept an incremental transformation of Cuba. 

“Cuba needs to change. It needs to change. And it doesn’t have to change all at once. It doesn’t have to change from one day to the next. Everyone is mature and realistic here,” he said during a press availability in February. 

Ted Piccone, a nonresident senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, says that even among hardliners advocating for regime change in Cuba, there’s an appetite for stability. 

“I think some in that community want something that’s more managed — not a total collapse and breakdown,” he said. “So I think this is going to be a more gradual process.” 

Piccone also predicts that Cuba’s energy crisis could be mitigated, giving negotiations time to play out, if the Trump administration can establish a pathway to deliver fuel to Cuba’s private sector — cutting out its government. 

Lee Schlenker, a research associate with the Global South program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argues that the keys to success could be more time and a time-tested mediator. 

The Vatican has served as a go-between for the U.S. and Cuba for decades. Recent talks between the Holy See and Havana led to Cuba agreeing to the release of 51 political prisoners. 

“I think we’re ready for a radical shift, and the best way to get there is through is through a Vatican mediated effort to gradually build trust and confidence, to have verifiable and concrete guarantees for both sides and to not use the population as fodder that gets caught in the middle of dispute between the two governments,” Schlenker said. 

A top federal judge in Washington on Friday blocked Justice Department subpoenas to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors after determining the government “produced essentially zero evidence” to support a criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, according to an unsealed court opinion. 

“There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will,” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said in his opinion.

“A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning. On the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual,” the judge added.

Acting U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro blasted Boasberg as an activist judge and has pledged to appeal the ruling.

The Justice Department’s probe centered on Powell’s testimony to Congress last year about cost overruns in a multi-billion-dollar office renovation project.

Powell rebuked the investigation in a video message in January as a politically motivated effort to influence the Fed’s interest rate policy.

The Justice Department’s move was met with heavy criticism from the Hill especially from key Republicans who stressed the importance of the Fed’s independence.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, warned Pirro’s office against attempting to appeal Boasberg’s ruling.

“This ruling confirms just how weak and frivolous the criminal investigation of Chairman Powell is and it is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence.  We all know how this is going to end and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office should save itself further embarrassment and move on,” Tillis said in an X post Friday.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

KINGSTON, N.Y. — A former New York state trooper accused of ramming his vehicle into an SUV during a high-speed chase leading to the death of an 11-year-old girl was convicted of manslaughter Friday at his second trial.

Prosecutors say Christopher Baldner rammed the SUV twice on the New York State Thruway, causing it to lose control and flip over. Eleven-year-old Monica Goods, who was in the SUV, was killed in the December 2020 crash. Baldner’s attorneys said the accident occurred after the SUV cut the trooper off as he pulled alongside during the pursuit.

A jury acquitted Baldner of murder and reckless endangerment charges in November, but they deadlocked on a second-degree manslaughter charge. Judge Bryan Rounds declared a mistrial and a second trial on the lone remaining charge began last month.

Assistant State Attorney General Jennifer Gashi told jurors during Baldner’s latest trial that he chose to “recklessly use his patrol car as a weapon” during the chase north of New York City. Defense attorney Anthony Ricco argued it was the driver of the SUV — Monica’s father, Tristin Goods — who acted recklessly and caused her death, according to the Daily Freeman.

Baldner pulled Tristin Goods over for speeding on the highway near Kingston the night of Dec. 22, 2020. Goods, his wife and two daughters were heading north from New York City to visit family.

Baldner and Goods argued, and the trooper pepper-sprayed the inside the vehicle. Goods drove off and Baldner pursued.

Defense attorneys said Goods collided with Baldner’s trooper car twice during the pursuit. An accident reconstruction expert for the defense testified that Goods lost control of the SUV when he overcorrected after “a very minor impact,” the newspaper reported.

Charles W. Murphy, president of the Police Benevolent Association of the New York State Troopers, said the union was deeply disappointed by the verdict and that Baldner was “simply following his training when he responded to a rapidly evolving and highly dangerous situation.”

“This outcome sends a troubling message to all law enforcement officers who must make split-second decisions to protect the public,” Murphy said in a written statement.

The ex-trooper retired in 2022 after almost 20 years with the state police.

Six service members were killed when their refueling aircraft “went down” in friendly airspace in western Iraq, according to U.S. Central Command.

“All six crew members aboard a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft that went down in western Iraq are now confirmed deceased. The aircraft was lost while flying over friendly airspace March 12 during Operation Epic Fury,” CENTCOM said Friday.

The KC-135 aircraft went down at approximately 2 p.m. ET on Thursday when two aircraft were involved in “an incident,” CENTCOM said in a brief statement, confirming that “one of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely.” 

“The incident occurred over friendly territory in western Iraq while the crew was on a combat mission, and again, was not the result, as CENTCOM has said, was not the result of hostile or friendly fire,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said during a Defense Department briefing on Friday.

The other aircraft involved was also a KC-135 tanker, according to a U.S. official.

The circumstances of the incident are currently under investigation and the identities of the service members who died in the incident are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified, officials said.

KC-135 aircraft are not equipped with parachutes and do not have ejection seats, which are primarily in fighter aircraft, officials have told ABC News.

Passengers and crew members of KC-135s instead are trained on how to exit the aircraft when it is on land or on water, officials said.

According to a 2008 Air Force profile of the tanker crews, the move to get rid of parachutes was made because the tankers “seldom have mishaps, and the likelihood a KC-135 crew member would ever need to use a parachute is extremely low.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun said that 41-year-old Ayman Mohamad Ghazali — the suspect involved in the shooting and vehicle-ramming attack at a Detroit-area synagogue on Thursday — had “lost several members of his own family … in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon.”

Strongly condemning the attack, Baydoun said “everyone deserves to worship in peace and we must unequivocally condemn any attack on a house of worship or the people within it.”

“We learned that the individual responsible for the incident that took place at Temple Israel Synagogue in West Bloomfield was a resident of Dearborn Heights,” Baydoun continued. “He died at the scene. Earlier this month, he lost several members of his own family, including his niece and nephew, in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon.”

Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin also vehemently condemned the attack, saying she is “so sick” of these incidents happening both within her community and across the country.

“Everyone deserves the right to worship in peace. Everyone. An act of antisemitism, an act of violence, of hate, should be treated to the fullest extent of the law,” Slotkin told ABC News on Thursday. “And I’m so sick of another one of these incidents all the time in my community, across the country. And I just — I think we need to acknowledge that we have a problem, and I’m just sick about it.”

Ghazali, who was armed with a rifle, died after a shootout with security at the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a senior federal law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said earlier.

Nobody inside the synagogue was hurt, and the synagogue noted that all 140 students as well as staff, teachers and “heroic security personnel” were accounted for, according to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.

“This tragedy comes at a time when communities everywhere are confronting rising hate and senseless violence. No matter where violence occurs, whether in West Bloomfield or anywhere around in the world, harm against innocent people is something we must all stand firmly against,” Baydoun said. “The tensions we see across the world too often find their way into our own neighborhoods, reminding us how deeply connected our shared safety is.”

The sheriff said one synagogue security guard was hit by the suspect’s truck in the incident and was “knocked unconscious” but was expected to be okay.

There were no other injuries in the attack, though 30 law enforcement officers were transported to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation, according to Bouchard.

“I want our community to know that we are working closely with our police department and regional partners to protect the safety of every house of worship in our city,” said Baydoun. “I urge residents to stay aware and vigilant, especially as we gather during these sacred final days of Ramadan. Let’s continue to care for one another and pay attention to anything that feels out of place … “My heart is with everyone affected by these deeply painful events.”

When a gunman opened fire at Old Dominion University on Thursday, killing one and injuring two others, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) students stepped in to subdue and kill the suspect, officials said.

The suspect, identified as Mohamed Jalloh, a former Army National Guardsman who was convicted of giving material support to ISIS, allegedly was trying to commit a terrorist attack, FBI Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans told reporters.

The gunman opened fire in Constant Hall, an academic building, around 10:43 a.m. and was found dead minutes after officers arrived, Old Dominion University Police Chief Garrett Shelton said during a press briefing.

Two of the victims were members of the ROTC, according to U.S. Army Cadet Command.

Evans said ROTC students were in the classroom when he opened fire and stepped in, rendering him “no longer alive.”

Evans would not go into detail as to how the suspected shooter was killed, but said he was not shot. “They basically were able to terminate the threat,” she said.

Jalloh, who was previously convicted in 2016 of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic militant group.  

Jalloh was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2017 and released in December 2024, according to Bureau of Prisons records. 

He served in the Virginia Army National Guard as a combat engineer from April 2009 to April 2015. He had no deployments. He left the Army as a specialist, which is a junior rank a soldier achieves automatically within four years.

He allegedly walked into the Old Dominion classroom on Thursday and asked if it was an ROTC class, and when someone answered, “yes,” he shot the instructor several times, according to sources. Evans alleged he shouted “Allah Akbar” during the incident.

When he pleaded guilty in 2016, Jalloh admitted he had communicated with a member of ISIS who was located overseas, who introduced him to an individual in the U.S. who was actually an FBI confidential informant.

The ISIS member was believed to be actively plotting an attack and believed Jalloh would assist the informant in carrying it out. During one meeting with the FBI informant, Jalloh was asked about a timeline for an operation and commented that it was better to plan an attack for the month of Ramadan, court records say. 

Prosecutors had recommended Jalloh serve 20 years in prison. It’s not immediately clear why he was released before the end of his 11-year sentence, though it is not unusual in the federal prison system for inmates to be released before serving their full term of imprisonment. 

A sophomore named Jennifer told ABC Hampton, Virginia, affiliate WVEC that she was waiting for a midterm exam when she heard a group of people saying, “get out, get out, get out.”

“All of a sudden, we heard a commotion. A lot of people rumbling, starting to get up,” she said. “The guy next to me, we looked at each other, we started running, and that’s when we heard, you know, gunshots.” 

She commended the university’s quick communication through alerts, saying, “I’m very, very proud of how quick the situation was handled.”

Shelton told reporters that the investigation is still ongoing and they were combing through the campus for clues.

“We now have to search every single room in that facility. There were students that we found that were hiding and faculty and staff,” he said.

Evans said there was only one weapon found on the suspect.

FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that the bureau is treating the shooting as “as an act of terrorism,” and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force will be working with local police in the investigation.

There’s no longer a threat, the university said, adding that classes are canceled for the rest of the day and Friday.

“Today was a tragic day for the campus of Old Dominion University,” Old Dominion President Brian Hemphill told reporters.

Authorities are responding after shots were fired at a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, according to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

FBI Director Kash Patel described the incident as an “apparent vehicle ramming and active shooter situation” at Temple Israel.

No injuries have been confirmed, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said.

The suspect came to the synagogue and was engaged by synagogue security, the sheriff said, adding that the suspect is not in custody at this time.

Preliminary information is that this was an intentional vehicle ramming, sources briefed on the investigation told ABC News.

According to the sources, the driver was seen steering around security bollards, and caused a fire when colliding the car into the building’s front doors.

The Michigan State Police said it’s urging residents to stay away from the area and said police are increasing patrols at other places of worship in the area.

The Jewish Federation of Detroit said in a statement, “We are aware of an active security incident at Temple Israel. Law enforcement are responding. Our Jewish agencies are currently in precautionary lockdown.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement, “This is heartbreaking. Michigan’s Jewish community should be able to live and practice their faith in peace.”

“I am hoping for everyone’s safety,” she added.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.