Trump administration has viral DOGE videos taken down. The archivists have already reloaded them.

Last week, viral videos of former employees of the Elon Musk-led government agency DOGE went viral. The videos provide a a rare, behind-the-scenes look how the DOGE was run and how the federal funding cuts were decided.

On Friday, a federal judge ordered the videos have been removed after a complaint from the Trump administration.

However, much to the chagrin of the US government, internet archivists and forums like Reddit’s r/datahoarders already reloaded backups of videos.

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association (AHA), and the Modern Language Association (MLA) initially hosted long-hour installations by two former DOGE employees, Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh. Fox and Cavanaugh were ousted because of a lawsuit from three organizations over DOGE’s cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The deposit of the two DOGE employees went quickly. Fox’s discussion went viral especially after clips were made of not being able to explain exactly what DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) was, regardless of whether DEI was his reasoning for reducing funding to certain projects or groups. A DOGE employee shared how programs were marked for cut if they were marked with words like “Black” or “LGBTQ+” but words like “caucasian” or “heterosexual” were not. Other clips showed how DOGE staff used ChatGPT to determine which programs to cut.

According to the Trump administration, online mockery of former DOGE employees puts them in real, offline danger. The government told the judge that Fox had been the subject of harassment and even death threats.

As a result of this request, Judge Colleen McMahon ordered that the ACLS, the AHA, and the MLA “take any action possible to withdraw” the DOGE videos from the Internet.

The ACLS, AHA, and MLA argued that this was a First Amendment issue and that the videos were in the public interest since they included “testimony from high-ranking government officials on matters of public concern.”

The judge rejected their request and adjourned the case for Tuesday. The hours-long post by Fox and Cavanaugh was removed shortly thereafter on Friday.

However, without a judge’s order, little could be done to remove the many viral clips that had been posted on social media.

In addition, self-described internet curators and data loggers ripped all of the two videos before they were removed from YouTube. Since being removed, the two full versions have been re-uploaded on sites such as Internet Archive. A subreddit r/data managers and offers two video streams, so that anyone who wants to can download the deposits locally to their computers as well.

Regardless of what the judge decides in the trial, it seems pretty clear that the internet has come to a decision. These videos of the two DOGE staff placements will always be available online in one form or another.