Black activists call out Congressional Black Caucus ties to pro-Trump AI company Palantir

Activists including LaTosha Brown, Jamal Bryant and Joy-Ann Reid say the foundation should reject funding from the Trump-linked tech company.

A coalition of Black activists is challenging the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation over its relationship with the AI company, Palantir.

In an open letter, signed by Black Lives Matter Co-Founders LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, Revs. Jamal Bryant and Mark Thompson, activists Tamika Mallory and Rashad Robinson, media personality Joy Ann-Reid, and others, leaders urged the nonprofit foundation arm of the CBC to reevaluate its partnership with Palantir, a software company with ties to President Donald Trump and far-right MAGA policies that have harmed Black communities.

“There is a difference between making compromises and being compromised,” said the group of activists, pointing to Palantir being a major sponsor for the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference in September. “The recent partnership between the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the Trump-serving, life-destroying corporation Palantir shows that the CBC has crossed that line.”

The group of activists, which also includes Nadine Smith, president and CEO of Color Of Change and Maurice Mitchell, national director of Working Families Party, called out Palantir’s role in being an “injustice machine,” including providing the software to federal agencies that allows the government to identify and eliminate programs related to equity and diversity.

The company, run by conservative billionaires Peter Thiel (chairman), Alex Karp (CEO), and Stephen Cohen (president), has also provided “predictive policing” software that is used to racially profile Black communities, as well as technology expanding surveillance programs. The open letter to the CBC also notes: “Palantir’s top leadership has a decades-long history of advancing racist myths and conspiracy theories, and a recent history of funding the rise of Trump and MAGA.”

Given the unique role the Congressional Black Caucus has played as the “conscience of Congress” since its founding in 1971, activists say the influential group has a moral obligation to reject Palantir.

“Certainly, rejecting Palantir’s financial contributions is a starting point. But it is not an endpoint,” reads the letter.  “There must be standards across the Caucus that limit corporate influence and ensure that the interests of Black people come first. That must be the CBC’s stance, whether it’s about their orientation to policies related to AI, health, finance, education, or environmental protection, or about the use of their powers to investigate, expose, and hold corporations accountable.”

The coalition of Black leaders says the current political climate, in which Republicans have turned to racial gerrymandering that stands to eject several CBC members from their seats, especially calls for the caucus to be resolute. The activists said that it is “painful” to call out the CBC publicly, but said it was compelled to do so due to public backlash over its acceptance of Palantir money.

“[It] has reverberated throughout the Black world. Even though it’s such a wonky, inside baseball affair, people are talking about it. Not in a good way,” they write. “We call on the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to find its way out of this compromised position, and find their way back to the leadership role they should play.”

The group of Black leaders said America will “neither progress nor survive” without the unique role that the Congressional Black Caucus has historically played.

Referencing CBC founding member U.S. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the letter says, “That means remembering that Shirley Chisholm’s refrain about being ‘unbought and unbossed’ is not just inspiring rhetoric, it’s a strategy for effecting change.” They added, “We need the CBC to embrace that strategy. Their current strategy is failing us.”