Palantir Contracts and ICE Camps Expand US Carceral State
August 12, 2026
USA Today newsroom unions clash with corporate leadership over Palantir partnerships while ICE feeds millions of LexisNexis data records into proprietary surveillance architectures. Across the federal apparatus, the Trump administration weaponizes banking networks to debank dissidents, ties multimillion-dollar police grants to ideological compliance, and dismisses remaining January 6 prosecutions.
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“An inherent conflict of interest”: 800 USA Today Co. employees want the company to end its new Palantir partnership
More than 800 USA Today Co. employees are calling on the company to dissolve its recently announced partnership with Palantir, according to a joint statement from 31 unionized newsrooms published Monday. “While USA Today Co. CEO Mike Reed championed this partnership as a way to drive revenue, we bel…
- media and technology
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ICE to Pay LexisNexis Millions for Data to Feed to Palantir
LexisNexis sells a massive amount of data to law enforcement, including ICE. New records indicate ICE wants to feed that data into a Palantir system.
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Debanking Dissidents
The Trump administration is following in the footsteps of authoritarian regimes by weaponizing global banking rules against its enemies.
- geopolitics
- structural power
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Minnesota Is Trying To Talk Texas Into Extraditing An Arrested ICE Officer To Face Assault Charges
Will anyone ever hold an ICE officer accountable for shooting or killing someone? Maybe, but it won’t be anyone from this administration — one that has actively blocked state investigators from following up on ICE shootings and even pulled FBI agents from ongoing investigations so ICE can forgive it…
- media and technology
- AI governance
- structural power
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Kids are being detained in police custody, in facilities never designed for them
Akelomongkol/Getty Images Many Australians assume that when a child is refused bail, they’re taken straight to a youth detention centre. In reality, many spend days – and sometimes weeks – in police custody before being transferred to youth detention. Last week, an ABC investigation revealed childre…
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New tech adds phone tracking to license plate readers, associating devices with identifiable cars
License plate readers like this one could soon be joined by sensors that detect phones inside passing cars. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Imagine that you share a ride to work with the same colleague most mornings. As it passes by a license plate reader, the camera records the car, which can be linke…
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‘Shoved the tube so hard it tore my nose’: Kurdish film-maker recounts ‘inhumane’ ICE force-feeding
Gabar Choli tells of how, for months, he was shackled, pinned and forcibly fed – and the physical and emotional scars the ordeal has left In June 2025, a sluggish and thin Gabar Choli, with sunken temples and bones visible under his skin, braced himself for the immigration detention center guards to…
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Trump officials offer cities tens of millions for Memphis-style police surges – with conditions
DoJ to give $300m for enforcement surges in four cities, as long as they abandon progressive ideologies on policing The Trump administration is offering grants of tens of millions of dollars to cities across the US to create more Memphis-style enforcement surges – on the condition that they abandon…
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Has a US court just set the grounds for another January 6 insurrection?
A US judge has begrudgingly dismissed the last prosecution cases tied to the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill.
- geopolitics
- structural power
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Don’t call them ICE detention centers. Call them camps | John Washington
I’ve spent a decade reporting on immigration enforcement. The word ‘camp’ best captures the political function of these facilities We don’t have concentration camps today in the United States, but we have something close. More than 65,000 people are currently confined in demeaning, often dangerous,…