Bureaucrats at the National Endowment for the Humanities cut checks to fund various liberal research projects as the Trump administration signaled its intention to cut diversity, equity, and inclusion-related grant spending, a Washington Examiner review of public records has found.

Many of the grant projects that NEH staffers silently funded weren’t slated to begin until much later in the Trump administration, suggesting that the payments may have been expedited to avoid looming cancellations.