By Fred Fleitz
A coalition of progressive activists has spent the past year building an enemies list of American companies that work with ICE and the U.S. military. At the top of that list is Palantir Technologies, a publicly traded company whose software runs Pentagon targeting, NATO operations, and ICE enforcement.
The “Purge Palantir” campaign is led by a coalition of leftist organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee, MediaJustice, Mijente, and the Palestinian-led BDS movement.
Their organizers openly say that ICE and the U.S. military are interchangeable targets. They want Palantir stripped of all its government contracts, want pension funds to divest, and want to publish a database called the “Palantir Payroll” naming every member of Congress who has ever taken a dollar from a Palantir-affiliated donor, including the engineers and analysts who write the code.
Today, it is Palantir. Tomorrow it might be Anduril for building drones, Lockheed for building F-35s, or Raytheon for building the missiles intercepting Houthi attacks on commercial shipping.
So far, the Purge Palantir campaign is working because the Democratic Party won’t say no.
The campaign’s stated grievance is that one company has too much sway over too many elected officials — that Palantir’s money and influence have captured Congress and corrupted policy.
But, in reality, the small, well-funded coalition of activists in this campaign are the ones beholden to the AFSC and the rest of the special interests pushing this policy objective.
At the AFSC’s behest, the Democrats are reading their “Palantir Payroll” lists, returning Palantir checks, and apologizing in the activists’ own language. If that’s not donor capture, I don’t know what is.
Sadly, the surrender list is long and growing every day.
Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, a West Point graduate on the House Armed Services Committee, pledged to give away more than $93,000 in Palantir-linked contributions. Sen. John Hickenlooper and Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger on the Armed Services Committee, redirected tens of thousands to “immigrant rights groups.”
Rep. Ro Khanna of California, also of Armed Services, swore off future donations. Rep. Seth Moulton, an Iraq War veteran now running for Senate, returned a Palantir PAC check, with campaign bragging that it had “purged” the donations from its books — adopting the activists’ word verbatim. Rep. Mike Levin refunded a personal contribution. Rep. Mallory McMorrow returned $4,750 from two engineers.
Then came the kicker. In December, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, handed over $29,300 from Palantir-connected sources to immigrant advocacy groups. He still got hammered in his Senate primary by an attack ad accusing him of being too cozy with the company and lost his race.
That’s right: A senior member of the House Intelligence Committee gave back money from an American source to an organization that aids foreigners, and the activist left punished him for it anyway.
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The AFSC and its allies have done conservatives the favor of being explicit about their goals, opposing American military action against Iran and even ICE enforcement of duly enacted immigration law. While these are positions a serious country can debate, they are not positions that the party that wants the keys to the executive branch can be seen embracing.
We have seen where this road leads. In 2018, Google employees revolted and forced their company to abandon the original Project Maven contract. The Pentagon spent years rebuilding that capability with other vendors. The activist left learned the lesson: If you can intimidate the engineers and embarrass the investors, you can knock an American defense capability offline without ever winning an election.
Every concession to this coalition is a unilateral concession to America's adversaries. The software that targets Russian armor in Ukraine, that tracked Iranian operatives, that helps DHS find the cartels moving fentanyl across the border — that is the capability the activist left wants stripped down, and that is the capability American troops, agents, and allies will go without when the next crisis comes if this mob isn’t defeated.
Democrats spent four years lecturing the country about the existential stakes of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the China challenge, and the threat of Iranian-backed terror. Now, their members of Congress are publicly returning American campaign donations because a leftist organization told them to. The irony is hard to miss!
There is no reason this campaign should be devoid of political consequences. Every Democrat who has returned a check should be asked, on camera, the same two questions: Do you agree with the AFSC that ICE, the Israel Defense Forces, and the U.S. military are interchangeable evils? And if your concern is that elected officials shouldn't be captured by a single concentrated interest, why are you doing exactly what this one tells you to?
Watch them stammer. Then watch their voters notice.
Fleitz is a former Chief of Staff to President Trump’s National Security Council
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