Trump Taps Palantir to Create Master Database on Every American

The Trump administration is collecting data on all Americans, and they are enlisting the data analysis company Palantir to do it.

The New York Times reports that President Trump has enlisted the firm, founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel, to carry out his March executive order instructing government agencies to share data with each other. The order has increased fears that the government is putting together a database to wield surveillance powers over the American public.

Since then, the administration has been very quiet about these efforts, increasing suspicion. Meanwhile, Palantir has taken more than $113 million in government spending since Trump took office, from both existing contracts and new ones with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. That number is expected to grow, especially given that the firm just won a new $795 million contract with the DOD last week.

Palantir is speaking with various other agencies across the federal government, including the Social Security Administration and the IRS, about buying its technology, according to the Times. Palantir’s Foundry tool, which analyzes and organizes data, is already being used at the DHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and at least two other agencies, allowing the White House to compile data from different places.

The administration’s efforts to compile data began under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which sought Americans’ personal data from multiple agencies including the IRS, the SSA, Selective Service, Medicare, and many others. In some cases, court orders hindered these efforts, but not in all of them.

Thiel has multiple ties to DOGE, both through Musk and through many of his former employees working for the effort or taking other jobs in the Trump administration. And this data collection effort could give Thiel, Musk, and Trump unprecedented power over Americans, with the president being better able to punish his critics and target immigrants.

Privacy advocates, student unions, and labor rights organizations are among those who have sued to stop Trump’s data collection efforts. Palantir’s involvement also gives a powerful tech company access to this data, and its CEO, Alex Karp, doesn’t exactly have a benign agenda, hoping to cash in on American techno-militarism. Musk too has plans for government data, using his AI, Grok, to analyze it. Will anyone be able to stop Trump and these tech oligarchs?

Donald Trump has decided that his reign as “Mr. Nice Guy” on his Chinese tariff plan has come to an end.

In a Truth Social post Friday, the president claimed that his supposedly soft approach on China in his tariff negotiations had greatly benefited their economy, but added that the Eastern powerhouse had “totally violated” the trade arrangement.

“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote. “The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World. We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them.

“Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, ‘civil unrest.’ I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen,” he continued. “Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!

“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”

The announcement followed a Thursday night Fox News interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in which the trade negotiator said that talks between the two countries had “stalled.”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration temporarily lowered its import duties on Chinese goods to 30 percent from 145 percent. In exchange, China said it would lower its import tariff on American products to 10 percent from 125 percent. Both nations agreed to maintain a reciprocal tariff rate of 10 percent.

But how countries plan to continue negotiations with the White House over the hit-and-miss trade agreements is unclear, especially after components of Trump’s plan were deemed illegal by different U.S. courts. Trump’s tariff plan was blocked by a trade court Wednesday, with a three-judge panel ruling that the president’s plan exceeded “any authority granted” by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. (That ruling has been temporarily paused, leaving the tariffs in place while the government appeals the decision.) Less than 24 hours later, another court intervened in Trump’s levies, denoting in a two-page order that the duties were “unlawful.”

Elon Musk was getting high on ketamine, psychedelics, Adderall, and ecstasy frequently while on the campaign trail for President Trump last year. Multiple sources reported that the billionaire was using so much ketamine that it was hurting his bladder, a common side effect of frequent use. 

The New York Times reports that Musk traveled with a box of about 20 different pills on him, including but not limited to Adderall, according to a photo and multiple sources. 

Musk being high all the time might explain some of the “quirks” that his fans chalk up to him being some misunderstood genius. That weird, babbling speech at CPAC in February? The weird jumping? That might have something to do with frequent use of the drugs mentioned above.  

This is the richest man on earth. He was firing people and cutting programs without care at DOGE. He tried to buy an election in Wisconsin. He recently had another child with another woman, while Grimes tweets at him on X about theirs. He heiled Hitler and is still trying to get to Mars, all while he whines about his multiple companies “suffering.” His being an avid drug user is unsurprising, but doing so while hugely impacting the president’s policy is very troubling. 

Donald Trump unleashed a furious screed lamenting his recent legal loss on tariffs, and pointed the finger at “sleazebag” conservative billionaire Leonard Leo, the ex-chairman of the Federalist Society.

In a post on Truth Social Thursday night, Trump railed against the U.S. Court of International Trade’s ruling the previous day, which found that the president had exceeded his legal authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, based on vague claims of “national emergencies.”

On Thursday, the Trump administration was granted a temporary stay of the little-known federal court’s ruling while the government appeals—but that didn’t keep Trump from flying off the handle.

“Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’ What other reason could it be?” Trump wrote.

Trump said that he regretted taking recommendations for judges from the Federalist Society, and lashed out at Leo specifically.

“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions,” Trump wrote. “He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court—I hope that is not so, and don’t believe it is!”

Leo is single-handedly responsible for installing the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court, and tracelessly pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into the conservative legal movement every year. While two of the judges responsible for blocking Trump’s sweeping retaliatory tariffs were appointed by other presidents, one, Judge Timothy Reif, was appointed by Trump during his first term.

In 2020, Leo left the Federalist Society to start his for-profit conservative consulting group, CRC Advisors.

“In any event, Leo left The Federalist Society to do his own ‘thing.’ I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations. This is something that cannot be forgotten!” Trump wrote.

Trump continued with a lengthy call for the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling, adding, “Backroom ‘hustlers’ must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!”

Trump’s move to shade the conservative playmaker comes as he prepares his own judicial nominees. Crucially, the Trump administration appears to have decided it no longer wants qualified judges in the first place, just political sycophants.

Pam Bondi told the American Bar Association Thursday that the administration would not cooperate with its vetting process, claiming that it favored candidates put forth by Democratic administrations. This move came shortly after Trump announced that he would nominate Emil Bove, his personal lawyer in the Stormy Daniels trial, for a lifetime federal judiciary appointment.

Elon Musk isn’t done with the federal government after all.

Days after the tech billionaire confirmed on X that his time as a special government employee had come to a close, the vice president revealed that the administration isn’t ready to let Musk go.

“I think there’s an effort by the media to sort of say the Elon era is over, and I think that’s actually totally wrong,” JD Vance told Newsmax in an interview released late Thursday.

“Now, he has, obviously, a day job, and he’s got to go back to his day job to run his companies, but the DOGE effort will continue, [and] Elon will continue to be an important adviser for both me and the president,” Vance continued. “And most importantly, the job of making the government more efficient, of not wasting people’s money, that has to continue. I think it’s one of the most important mandates that we got from the American people, and we will keep on executing on that mandate.”

And Donald Trump similarly appears to be trying to extend Musk’s time in office. In a Truth Social post Thursday, the president announced that he would be holding a press conference with Musk the following day, calling him “terrific.”

“This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,” Trump wrote.

It’s no secret that Musk had been a decidedly unpopular figure in the White House weeks before he refocused his attention on his struggling electric car brand. In the few short months that Musk ran DOGE, reports emerged that practically everyone in the White House hated him. He had stomped on the toes of Trump’s Cabinet, failing to consult them before paring down federal agencies technically under their control. He got into a screaming match with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Earlier this week, Musk whined that DOGE had become a “whipping boy” for the administration’s failures. He interfered in a deal over an AI datacenter in the United Arab Emirates to try to get his company xAI a piece of the pie, and he told CBS that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” was actually a bad idea.

But there are plenty of reasons why Trump and co. might want to keep the world’s richest man in their pocket.

Musk was Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 election, spending at least $250 million in the final months of the president’s campaign after Trump was shot in July. Musk had also promised to funnel funds toward other Republicans, declaring in the wake of the November election that his super PACs would “play a significant role in primaries.” In the following months, Musk threatened to use his money to fund primary challengers to Republicans who opposed Trump’s agenda and to go after Democrats, and that he would be preparing “for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the district attorney level.”

The week after Trump returned from the Middle East trip, however, Musk announced at the Qatar Economic Forum that he had “done enough” political spending.

“I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk said.