Has Big Brother arrived? Trump's secret effort to gather government data on millions
The Trump administration is reportedly leaning on an Elon Musk-allied tech company to build wide-ranging data tools pooling government information on millions of Americans and immigrants alike.
The campaign has raised alarms from critics that the company could be furthering Musk's DOGE effort to vacuum up and potentially weaponize – or sell – mass amounts of sensitive personal data, particularly against vulnerable groups like immigrants and political dissidents.
In March, the president signed an executive order dedicated to 'stopping waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos,' a euphemism for pooling vast stores of data on Americans under the federal government.
To carry out the data effort, the administration has deepened the federal government's longstanding partnership with Palantir, a tech firm specializing in building big data applications, which was co-founded by Silicon Valley investor, GOP donor, and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel.
Since Trump took office, the administration has reportedly spent more than $113 million with Palantir through new and existing contracts, while the company is slated to begin work on a new $795 million deal with the Defense Department.
DOGE has reportedly sought to centralize data at key agencies (Getty Images)
Palantir is reportedly working with the administration in the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Internal Revenue Service, according to The New York Times .
Within these agencies, the firm is reportedly building tools to track the movement of migrants in real time and streamline all tax data.
The company is also reportedly in talks about deploying its technology at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education, both of which have been targets of DOGE, and which store sensitive information about Americans' identities and finances.
'We act as a data processor, not a data controller,' the company insisted in response to the Times report. 'Our software and services are used under direction from the organizations that license our products. These organizations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted.'
Elon Musk announces exit from Trump's government
The Trump administration has reportedly pursued a variety of efforts to use big data to support its priorities, including social media surveillance of immigrants to detect alleged pro-terror views, and American activists who disagree wit Donal Trump's views..
Earlier this month, a group of former Palantir employees warned in an open letter that the company was 'normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a 'revolution' led by oligarchs.'
'By supporting Trump's administration, Elon Musk's DOGE initiative, and dangerous expansions of executive power, they have abandoned their responsibility and are in violation of Palantir's Code of Conduct,' the employees wrote.
Previous reporting from CNN and WIRED has described efforts at the Department of Homeland Security to build mass data tools to support tracking and surveilling undocumented immigrants, a key priority for the White House as deportations still aren't reaching levels necessary to meet Trump's promise of rapidly removing millions of people from the country.
The effort has involved merging data from outside agencies like Social Security and the IRS, according to WIRED .
'They are trying to amass a huge amount of data,' a senior DHS official told the magazine. 'It has nothing to do with finding fraud or wasteful spending … They are already cross-referencing immigration with SSA and IRS, as well as voter data.'
Since Trump took office, DOGE operatives, many of whom are unknown to the public nor have been vetted, have rapidly sought access to data at key agencies, including the Departments of Education and the Treasury, as well as the Social Security Administration, often over the objections of senior staff.
DOGE efforts to access data at agencies like the Treasury have prompted pushback from staff and lawsuits (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
The efforts have prompted scores of lawsuits against DOGE.
At Social Security, the administration also moved thousands of living, mostly Latino undocumented immigrants into the agency's 'Death Master File' in an attempt to pressure them to leave the country.
DOGE itself is reportedly under audit for its action by the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog.
An April letter from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee warned of DOGE's 'extreme negligence and an alarmingly cavalier attitude' toward sensitive data. It claimed a whistleblower had described how 'DOGE engineers have tried to create specialized computers for themselves that simultaneously give full access to networks and databases across different agencies.'
The 'whistleblower information obtained by the Committee, combined with public reporting, paints a picture of chaos at SSA [Social Security Administration] as DOGE is rapidly, haphazardly, and unlawfully working to implement changes that could disrupt Social Security payments and expose Americans' sensitive data,' the letter reads.'
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The Guardian
19 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Zohran Mamdani has unleashed a political earthquake
The surprise electoral success of Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist running to be mayor of New York, the most prominent city on earth, is a political earthquake. The breadth and scope of his performance were predicted by no polls, no prognosticators, none of the wise men. The ramifications of this upset will be felt for years, across the US and the developed world. In the end, it wasn't even close. Mamdani's widespread appeal represents the total collapse of a Democratic party establishment that had weathered Donald Trump's first term with rhetorical resistance, and fumbled the beginning of the second with triangulating appeasement. This year, the favorability of the Democratic party has collapsed to record lows, not because of the popularity of the Trump administration or the Republican party, but because of its unpopularity with its own voters. Chuck Schumer caving to the president on an unpopular and devastating Republican spending bill was the last straw for many. The Democratic party and the resistance to Trump had been severed for the first time. There's anger across the country with its leadership, Democratic and Republican, in cities, suburbs and rural areas. According to Americans, things are not going well. Prices are up, wages are down and instability is at an all-time high. Nowhere is this more true than in our biggest city, New York, where the moderate Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, made a quid pro quo deal to keep himself out of prison on corruption charges in exchange for enforcing Trump's policies in a city where Trump had minimal political support. Enter Mamdani. Many major cities in the US, in recent years, had a two-party system, not between Democrats and Republicans, but between centrist Democrats and their progressive flank. The US, like all polities, has many organized political groupings, but due to byzantine electoral laws, only two official ones exist - the state-administered ballot lines. Nowhere is this more true than in New York, the crown jewel of the electoral socialist left in the United States for more than a century. Mamdani is the progeny of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the US's largest socialist organization in a century. He is among the many young people inspired by Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. The staying power of that campaign has asserted itself over the years. Most of the talented organizers and thinkers whom it shaped were in college or their early 20s. They were never going to stop being socialists. They just needed seasoning. Mamdani got involved in the DSA as a young man and honed his skills leading campaigns in the nearly all-volunteer organization. He has spent most of his adult life as a DSA organizer. After the New York City DSA had built sufficient infrastructure and he had learned the necessary skills, he was able to win election to the state assembly in 2020. But to Mamdani, democratic socialism isn't an identity or a set of principles. It is being part of and accountable to a democratic organization, the sort of working-class civil society that has atrophied in this country, but at one time built the backbone of the welfare state across western society and lent the muscle to the New Deal. Mamdani and the DSA cannot be separated. It's a different, and for many Americans new, but a deeply old way of thinking about politics. Political organizations represent different classes, which are necessarily in conflict. To win for your class, you must be a representative of working-class democracy. Mamdani was built by the DSA and the young leftwing milieu that emerged after the Sanders campaign. They cannot be separated. Not his charisma or campaign style. He is a product of the movement. His victory and its comprehensive level are shocking to nearly all. How did he do it? Combining new and old tactics. Mamdani had perhaps the most innovative social media campaign in American political history. Not jumping on tired memes, but showcasing his authenticity. He also borrowed old tactics. Mamdani harnessed the sort of retail diaspora politics that have always won in the world's most diverse city. He campaigned in dozens of languages, met leaders from ethnic groups from around the world and sold his vision in the style of Fiorello LaGuardia. This way, he was able to harness both the insurgent left, often caricatured as downwardly mobile, overly educated and overwhelmingly white, and the worldwide working-class diaspora that shapes the neighborhoods of New York. As he climbed the polls through steady mass organization, almost linearly, he began to face ever-increasing, and horrifying, attacks from capital and the powers that be, to the tune of a record $25m in outside spending. The one they homed in on was one that had been proven to take down leftwing leaders across the world, such as Jeremy Corbyn: antisemitism. All social justice-minded people are horrified by antisemitism, an ancient hatred. It's an accusation that would make anyone on the left, anyone of conscience, take notice. For this reason, used in a spurious way, it was an insidious attack that could break the left. However, in this election, the baseless smear backfired. There are several reasons for this. The first is overuse. It's quite blatant to continually accuse obviously deeply compassionate and humanistic people of an evil hatred without evidence. No one believes friendly and understanding social democrats in a secular urban milieu are pogromists or jihadists (despite nasty Islamophobic baiting about Mamdani's background), for obvious reasons. The second is the actual circumstances. Most accusations of antisemitism on the left have little or nothing to do with actual overt discrimination or hatred; they are almost entirely based on opinion of the state of Israel. As Israel continues its genocide of Palestinians and long-term eliminationist and revanchist ambitions, and ties itself closer to the far right in the US, Democratic voters in the US have made the rapid and historic transition to sympathizing with Palestinians over Israel by a nearly 3-1 margin. Even last year, this issue and money could win Democratic primaries. No longer. Lastly, Mamdani is in many ways a continuation of the Jewish left tradition in the United States. New York has long been the home of the most powerful electoral socialist left in the United States. The base for the Socialist party of America (SPA) or the American Labor party, many-time electoral winners, was the Jewish community. Jews in New York voted in the hundreds of thousands for socialists for decades. These are the same policies of so-called 'sewer socialism' (in which socialists ran cities like Milwaukee and boasted of excellent sewer systems), the same parties (DSA being the direct inheritor of the SPA), the same tradition and even the same neighborhoods as a century ago. The foundation of the American left. An unbroken line. Mamdani is the inheritor of the tradition of Baruch Vladeck, and of the socialists and trade unions that built New York. Even the membership of DSA and the staff of his campaign reflect this. So, how did Mamdani win support? He brought back class as the defining issue of politics. Class as a political divide has declined across the industrialized world for decades, beginning in the US. While Sanders reinjected a class message and a degree of class polarization back within the Democratic coalition, there were still shortcomings. Bernie did worse among Black voters across class. And Bernie and other democratic socialists relied heavily on the good graces of socially progressive upper-middle-class professionals, rendering socialists subordinate to or in coalition with their interests and organizations. After nearly a decade of work by the left, this class polarization seemed uncrackable. Until now. Mamdani underachieved compared with prior leftwing candidates in professional progressive areas like the Upper West Side. But he smashed through the racial barrier that had divided the working class. Few expected this before the votes rolled in. His base would be downwardly mobile white professionals, of course. But his clear message and innovative campaign brought back real class politics, of the kind that seemed a myth in the contemporary age. According to the New York Times, Mamdani did better with voters of color than with white voters. While he shed reliably progressive votes among the Times-reading, machine-hating liberals of Manhattan, he won them back many times over among working-class people of color who had never taken a second look at leftist candidates before. In this, he reversed nearly 30 years of anti-materialist political science theories. This may seem like something confined to New York City, a progressive bastion in a deep blue state. But it points a path forward for the left and for advocates of social justice and liberatory politics. Donald Trump's most shocking and profound gains in 2024 came among young voters, particularly men, Latino voters, Asian voters and urban voters in general. These are the exact demographics that came out in droves for Mamdani. The left has long shirked its responsibility to fight the far right, leaving it to the center as if the political spectrum were a rigorously enforced line rather than a fluid concept. But the center failed. And they sacrificed these demographics to Trump because these masses were fed up with the status quo. The center could never win them back. But the radical left actually could, through a targeted, economic, anti-establishment message. Mamdani's campaign did it, and brought people back from the far right on a massive scale, more than any anti-Trump rally could. In this way, campaigns like Mamdani's are actively practicing anti-fascism in a real way, by winning the targets of the right back to the left. The left needs to study this shocking election and take thorough notes. The first is that Mamdani was a product of real, organic, working-class organization in the DSA. The kind that has been dying out in this country for half a century and is disregarded by most. This lack of organization is the defining feature of our political time. The only way to the future is more people in the DSA, more people in unions, more people in civic organizations and the rebuilding of working-class community. Our institutions are hollow, but Mamdani and his 50,000 youthful volunteers are proof that they can be rebuilt, and that people yearn to do so. In 2017, a DSA organizer and philosopher named Michael Kinnucan said: 'US civic culture is so hollowed out at the grassroots level that in any city in the US if your organization can get 40 to 50 committed people in a room occasionally you're probably operating one of the five or six most potentially powerful grassroots organizations in your city.' This idea was foundational to DSA, especially in New York City, and shaped Mamdani. For many, it seemed a fantasy. Five hundred thousand votes later, across nearly every language and nationality in the world, it's a warning. To defeat the right, the left must learn from Mamdani and the DSA and rebuild mass working-class organization. Sure, charisma helps, but at its core, this win was an eight-year project that must be replicated everywhere if we are to defeat fascism and stop the worst horrors of the climate crisis. Mamdani is an Obama-level political talent, but most of all he is a call to return to real working-class organization. This is something the hollow entities of the Democratic or Republican parties could never defeat, and something they learned on Tuesday night. Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign
Daily Mail
35 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Reality star deported to Italy after fraud conviction asks Trump for 'second chance'
Former reality TV star Joe Giudice says he's done his time after being convicted and deported from the U.S. and is asking Donald Trump for a second chance so he can reunite with his daughters. Giudice, 53, was hit with a 41-month jail sentence in 2014 after being convicted of multiple counts of bankruptcy fraud and one of tax dodging. After being released, he was deported to his native Italy in 2019 and has been living in the Bahamas since 2021, where he is waging a legal campaign to be allowed back into the US. Amid the White House 's push to rid the U.S. of illegal migrants, the ex-Real Housewives of New Jersey star pleaded his case to the president in an Instagram post to return to the country he grew up in on Thursday. 'I'm Joe Giudice. I served my time, and I've been deported from the U.S. for nearly a decade,' he wrote. 'I was raised in Jersey, I'm a father of four amazing daughters, and I just want to be allowed to visit them again.' 'President Trump, I respect you and I'm asking for a second chance.' Giudice's former Real Housewives colleague Siggy Flicker, who Trump appointed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council earlier this year, commented that she's working on it. Flicker wrote: 'I'm trying. Joe should be back home with his beautiful daughters!!!!!!' Giudice's criminal conviction and subsequent deportation also ended his marriage – with ex-wife Teresa also sentenced to 11 months inside. At the time of their conviction, the Justice Department released a statement that made an example of the former couple and highlighted the risks of 'cheating the government' by failing to pay taxes. U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said: 'The Giudices together deceived financial institutions with patently false loan applications; were dishonest when they sought the protection of the bankruptcy court and hid assets and income from the trustee; and Giuseppe [Joe] Giudice cheated the government by failing to pay taxes on years of significant income. 'When they pleaded guilty, both admitted swearing to statements they knew were lies. Prison is the appropriate penalty for these serious financial crimes.' Giudice said in 2023 that he still doesn't believe he did much wrong – and slammed the US for dumping him 'like a dog' in Italy. He said: 'I got thrown into a country that I knew nothing about. All right, basically, just dumped there like, like, like, I don't know, like, I guess a dog, you know what I mean. Not even a dog gets dumped like that. 'And, you know, thank God, Italy took me in and, and basically took care of me. You know, they actually treated me like a person, not like the US. 'The US treats you like garbage. I mean, they treat their own citizens like garbage. You know what? I mean, it's ridiculous the way they treat people there when you get involved in, you know, certain things like this.' An audibly angry Giudice also complained he would never have been charged with fraud in the Bahamas or Italy – and claimed murderers get treated better than fraudsters in the US. The dad-of-three continued: 'I mean, my charges don't even exist here. You know, tax things don't exist in The Bahamas. 'Tax things don't exist in, in Italy. You know what I mean, you know, you, you just don't go to jail for that stuff. You know what I mean, you get a fine, you get whatever. 'But, I mean, you don't go to jail. You don't break your you know, they don't break families up in, you know, like they do over there. 'I mean, they throw people behind bars there for years for that stuff. You know what I mean? And it's ridiculous, you know what I mean? A fine, you know, a slap on a wrist, six months. 'You know, anything you do as a first offense should be more than a fine, not 15-years, or whatever the hell they give by, you know, for certain things like this, which I've seen them all in there. 'You know what I mean? Who had 20 years. Who had 30 years. For tax things? You know what I mean? I'm not talking about, you kill somebody. 'Murderers get out before people like do tax frauds in the states. You know what I mean? First time, you should get a slap on a wrist, a fine. All right, take the money away, do whatever you gotta do. 'But, you know, to break up a family and, you know, destroy their lives over one mistake. I don't think it's fair.' Despite being furious over his jail sentence and deportation, Giudice said - as he did on Thursday - he hopes to overturn his deportation order and return to the US to be closer to his daughters: Gia, Milania, Audriana and Gabriella.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Elizabeth Warren presses oil companies on tax break lobbying for Senate bill
Democratic lawmakers led by the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren are pressing two energy companies about their efforts to 'win a $1.1bn tax loophole' in Donald Trump's so-called 'big, beautiful bill'. The proposed exemption, which Senate Republicans inserted into their version of the reconciliation mega-bill this month, would exempt fossil fuel companies from paying a tax codified by Biden in 2022. 'It's an insult to working people to give oil companies a massive tax handout while slashing healthcare and raising energy prices for millions of families,' Warren, who was a major advocate for the tax, told the Guardian. Enshrined within the Inflation Reduction Act, the corporate alternative minimum tax (CAMT) requires corporations with adjusted earnings over $1bn to pay at least 15% of the profits they report to their shareholders, which are known as 'book profits', in taxes. The Senate finance committee's proposal would shield domestic drillers from that tax by allowing companies to deduct certain drilling costs when calculating their income – a change that would allow some companies to pay zero dollars in federal taxes. Winning the tax tweak has been a major priority for fossil fuel interests this year. The oil major ConocoPhillips and Denver-based petroleum company Ovintiv directly lobbied for the change, federal disclosures show. On Thursday morning, Warren, the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Oregon senator Ron Wyden and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, sent letters to ConocoPhillips and Ovintiv pressing for answers on their role in shaping the CAMT change. 'Your company's lobbying disclosures explicitly prioritize this handout,' read the letters, which were shared exclusively with the Guardian. Both companies could 'benefit tremendously from this provision', read the letters, which are addressed to the ConocoPhillips CEO, Ryan Lance, and the Ovintiv CEO, Brendan McCracken, respectively. The Guardian has contacted ConocoPhillips and Ovintiv for comment. In their missives, the senators asked how much each company has spent on lobbying for the provision and will spend this year, how much each has donated to elected officials advocating for fossil fuel tax cuts, and how much of a reduction in taxes each company would see if the provision is finalized, requesting answers by 9 July. 'The rationale for CAMT was simple: for far too long, massive corporations had taken advantage of loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying their fair share, sometimes paying zero federal taxes despite earning billions in profits,' the signatories wrote. The proposed change, the letters note, closely resembles a bill introduced by the Oklahoma senator James Lankford this year, which would allow companies to subtract 'intangible drilling and development costs' from their CAMT income calculations. Lankford accepted nearly $500,000 in donations from the fossil fuel sector between 2019 and 2024, making it his top source of industry funding. The Guardian has contacted the senator for comment. Deductions for intangible drilling costs – referring to costs incurred before drilling, such as for labor and equipment – have been on the books since 1913, making them the oldest, largest US fossil fuel subsidy, according to one report on the Lankford proposal. 'Big oil now wants this deduction to apply not only for purposes of their taxable income, but for book income purposes as well,' the letters say. 'Put another way, if enacted, this provision would reduce or even eliminate tax liabilities for oil and gas companies under CAMT, allowing some to pay no federal income taxes whatsoever.' Other energy-related provisions in the draft reconciliation bill would phase out incentives for clean energy manufacturing and energy efficiency, causing utility bills to rise and jobs to be lost. This makes the tax break proposal 'especially insulting', says the letter, which was sent as temperatures spiked across much of the US. 'Americans deserve to know if big oil paid for these Republicans in Congress to carve out tax breaks just for them,' said Warren. As drafted, the reconciliation bill would also jeopardize energy security by curbing the growth of renewable energy, Schumer told the Guardian. 'The Republicans' plan is a complete capitulation to big oil at the expense of clean energy and American families' wallets,' Schumer said. 'Republicans would rather kill over 800,000 good-paying jobs and send energy costs skyrocketing than stand up to their big oil billionaire buddies.'
