One of the strangest things I witnessed this week came thanks to a guy named Alex Karp. I had never heard of him but I certainly know about Palantir Technologies, the company he co-founded with Peter Thiel. It supplies data software to various governments and companies around the world, including, as my colleague Sophie Hurwitz writes, the Israeli government, which reportedly used Palantir's software to compile notorious "kill lists," and the United States to gather deportation data.
And these days, stocks are soaring and Karp is downright giddy about Donald Trump's return to power. He doesn't seem to care who knows it either. As Sophie writes:
"We’re doin’ it!” Karp yelled during a call with investors, arms spread wide. “And I’m sure you’re enjoying this as much as I am!”
The “it” in question? It seemed to be a reference to enabling President Donald Trump’s administration to carry out mass deportation and police surveillance domestically, while aiding the “West” globally—actions that, “on occasion,” Karp said on the call, may involve the need to “kill.”
“I’m very happy to have you along for the journey,” the CEO said. “We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”
“He will be the quarterback of White House policy.”
BY ISABELA DIAS
On Thursday evening, the US Senate voted to confirm Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a key arm of the executive branch in charge of the federal budget and agency regulations. Vought will officially return to his old job, which—as I wrote in a profile of him published last year—he sees as being the “keeper of ‘commander’s intent’” in a war to upend the federal bureaucracy.
The 53–47 vote to confirm Vought came after Democrats held the Senate floor in an overnight marathon to protest the nomination. One after another, they excoriated Trump’s pick to be director of the OMB, perhaps more than any other controversial appointee.
“Of all the harmful nominees, of all the extremists that Donald Trump has elevated, of all the hard-right ideologies who have come before the Senate,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, “none of them hold a candle to Russell Vought. He is far and away the most dangerous to the American people.”
He added: “Most people have never heard of Russell Vought before, but make no mistake about it, my fellow Americans: He is the most important piece of the puzzle in Donald Trump’s second term. He will be the quarterback of White House policy.”
Describing Vought as the “godfather of the ultra right,” Schumer called him “Project 2025 incarnate.”
A self-avowed Christian nationalist, Vought is a wonky bureaucrat and Washington insider committed to Trump’s obsession with “draining the swamp.” During Trump’s first term, he tested the boundaries of the law to advance the president’s radical goals. Founder of the conservative think tank Center for Renewing America, Vought is also one of the architects behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 mandate for Trump’s comeback, advocating for expanding presidential powers and subjugating the federal government.
As I wrote in a profile of Vought, if confirmed, he would be the man best positioned to realize Trump’s visions—and push the religious right’s agenda:
For Vought, politics is downstream from religion. He sees a strong presidency as a way to bring forth a Christian nation. Vought opposes abortion and has referred to transgender identity as a “contagion.” He has suggested migration policy should be rooted in Judeo-Christian principles, with immigrants tested on their readiness to “assimilate.” If Trump wins, Vought wants to infuse the next conservative administration with the values of Christian nationalism—the conviction that the United States is bound to the teachings of Christ, from which all else follows.
During a January confirmation hearing, Vought was pressed on his anti-abortion stance and support of cuts to federal programs like Medicaid. He also reaffirmed his belief that the Impoundment Control Act, which limits the president’s authority to withhold funds appropriated by Congress, is unconstitutional. “My view of the [OMB director] position is that you come into an administration and you do what the president ran on, what the president’s viewpoints are,” Vought testified. “You take the viewpoint and you dispense it throughout the agency.”
“This is like, everybody’s watched Game of Thrones,” Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said on the Senate floor this week, “he wants to be the king’s hand.” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warrencalled Vought the “puppet master” behind the Trump administration’s brief-but-chaotic funding freeze of all federal grants and loans. “We don’t know how far Russ Vought’s extremism will go,” she said. “But we can’t afford to wait and find out.”
While in charge of the OMB, Vought spearheaded the effort to implement Schedule F, an executive order meant to strip thousands of career civil servants from job protections and replace them with handpicked MAGA loyalists. Vought has talked about putting federal workers “in trauma” and make them “not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
“In addition to Vought’s intention to dismantle the civil service,” reads a statement submitted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington opposing his nomination, “the Senate cannot ignore his willingness and intentions to misuse his own authority and craft plans for the president to subvert the law and, in the process, American democracy.”
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Palantir CEO Alex Karp sure seems happy about the prospect of using his technology to "kill." Christoph Hardt/ZUMA Press
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On a call with investors earlier this week, Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp—fresh off a week of stock surges—was euphoric. “We’re doin’ it!” he yelled, arms spread wide. “And I’m sure you’re enjoying this as much as I am!”
The “it” in question? It seemed to be a reference to enabling President Donald Trump’s administration to carry out mass deportation and police surveillance domestically, while aiding the “West” globally—actions that, “on occasion,” Karp said on the call, may involve the need to “kill.”
“I’m very happy to have you along for the journey,” the CEO said. “We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”
“Palantir is here to disrupt,” he continued. “And, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” (Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.)
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This type of rhetoric isn’t new for Karp. In 2020, he made headlines doing the same thing: announcing that Palantir was used “on occasion to kill people.”
Founded in 2003 by Karp and Trump donor Peter Thiel, Palantir supplies data analysis software—called “spy tech” by its critics—to governments and companies. That software has reportedly been used to help generate “kill lists” for the Israeli Defense Forces, target immigrant families for deportation from the United States, and enable rogue employees to spy on co-workers.
Karp made Palantir’s relationship to violence more forcefully evident in his latest letter to shareholders, released Monday. In the document, he quotes political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, who famously wrote that Hispanics cannot assimilate into American society. “The rise of the West was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion,’” Karp says in the letter, “‘but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’”
Karp is not the only one cashing in on Trump’s plans for territorial expansion and mass deportation. Stocks for the GEO Group and CoreCivic, two of the nation’s biggest private prison firms, jumped after Trump was elected and again after he was sworn in. While the Federal Bureau of Prisons has lessened its reliance on private prison companies in recent years, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has recently extended contracts with both companies.
A GEO Group spokesperson said in an email that the company is investing $70 million to increase “housing, transportation, and monitoring capabilities” in anticipation of the new administration’s “immigration law enforcement priorities.”
“This is, to us, an unprecedented opportunity to assist the federal government and the incoming Trump administration towards achieving a much more aggressive immigration policy,” GEO Group founder George Zoley said on a November earnings call.
CoreCivic told Mother Jones that the company “does not enforce immigration laws, arrest anyone who may be in violation of immigration laws, or have any say whatsoever in an individual’s deportation or release.”
Since initial bumps in stock prices, as Axiosreported, there has been some fluctuation—in part because Trump has talked up outsourcing incarceration. The president has discussed plans to use Guantanamo Bay and jails in El Salvador to house deportees, including American citizens.
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Elon Musk’s DOGEalsomay be creating enrichment opportunities for those who make money from helping the US deport immigrants. Karp said Musk’s slash-and-burn effort to reshape the federal government would be “very good” for his company, which generates about two-thirds of its US revenue from government contracts, according to the Financial Times.
“I think DOGE is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government, and that’s exactly what our commercial business is,” said Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar.
“There’s a revolution. Some people get their heads cut off,” Karp said. “We’re expecting to see really unexpected things, and to win.”
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