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In September, people arriving at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual conference in Washington were greeted with a large banner announcing Palantir as a “top sponsor.” If you don't know what Palantir is, it's one of the main corporations building the software behind mass surveillance, predictive policing, and the deportation machine. And its leadership helped fund Trump’s rise.
Today I’m calling on the Foundation to reject Palantir’s money and set real limits on corporate influence across the Caucus. LaTosha Brown and I wrote this open letter being published today, signed by a group of Black leaders who have spent years helping elect and support CBC members. The full text is below and can be found at droppalantir.org. Please pass it along.
Two Dangerous Attacks on the CBC
The CBC holds a special place in American politics, proof of what Black political power can do. For 55 years it has been where priorities of Black voters get turned into strategy and then into real impact—from forcing the U.S. government to act against South African apartheid over Reagan’s veto, to the long-game fight for criminal justice reform. It has served as America’s conscience, a critical protector of policies that transform our lives for the better.
But right now it is under attack in two ways. The first is the one we all see. Republicans are running a racist gerrymandering campaign, state after state, designed to strip Caucus members of their voters and steal away their seats. Many of the people who signed our letter are in that fight right now, through Election Day and beyond, trying to save those seats.
The second attack is less visible, more insidious, but just as dangerous. Corporate influence. Corporations are working to neutralize the Caucus from the inside, eating away at its foundation, trying to prevent it from doing what voters sent its members to Washington to do. Palantir’s sponsorship of the CBC Foundation annual gathering crossed a line that demands a response.
As we say in the letter: There is a difference between making compromises and being compromised. We need a morally clear Congressional Black Caucus that grows bigger and stronger every day. But that won’t happen unless the Caucus gets clear about its relationship to corporations. We reached out to the CBC Foundation to try to have this conversation constructively, before going public.
Longtime readers know I often talk about “the rules.”The letter closes on that idea. Black leaders were told they could never hold office, never pass laws, never win the presidency, and they changed those rules. If there’s a rule now saying that you can’t serve in Congress without depending on corporations and doing their bidding, the CBC is better positioned than anyone to break it. Shirley Chisholm called that being unbought and unbossed. That’s what the CBC has been at its best. And it’s what we need the CBC to be now.
Here is the letter in full. We’re proud to have these other Black leaders sign on to our letter: Cliff Albright, Rev. Jamal Bryant, Lauren Burke, April England-Albright, Rev. Tony Lee, Tamika Mallory, Maurice Mitchell, Esosa Osa, Joy-Ann Reid, and Rev. Mark A. Thompson.
An Open Letter to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation
Since its founding 55 years ago, the Congressional Black Caucus has played a special role in American politics. As a strategic voting bloc and savvy political operation, they figured out how to turn the U.S. government against South African apartheid even though President Reagan had vetoed any action against it. They played the long game on criminal justice reform, refusing to give up until real reform was won. They have championed not only major progress on delivering health care and other safety net programs to people who need and deserve them, but protected them from being raided, hollowed out, and corrupted in service of right-wing ideology. The work of the Caucus has benefited all Americans, even when other Democrats stood in the way of that progress. Its alumni include one vice president and one president who both ushered big change.
Today, the Caucus is under attack. Partisan and racialized gerrymandering, carried out in state after state controlled by Republicans, could eliminate many Caucus seats. We the undersigned have worked in the past to elect many CBC members, support Caucus members today, and mobilize voters to expand and strengthen its impact. Some of us are heavily involved right now: up until election day and through the post-election period. We need a Congressional Black Caucus that is large, committed, and effective—and that means electing more members.
At the same time, we need the Caucus to stand up for the values that it uniquely brings to Washington and to serve the communities that elect its members. Compromise is an inevitable reality of politics. But there is a difference between making compromises and being compromised. It is painful to say it out loud, and in public, but 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.
Years of yielding to corporations that have actively enabled the rise of right-wing extremism and profoundly ruined the lives of millions of Black people—and all people—has come to a breaking point. The CBC’s best role is serving as America’s conscience: illuminating what is right and what is wrong for the people of this country, no matter how much corporations, self-interested politicians and others try to confuse the issues. Its foundation’s partnership with Palantir forfeits that stature.
Each of us has worked closely with the Caucus, outside of government, to help sustain both the cultural momentum and voter turnout that can put Black people in office to fight for our communities. Yet we cannot ignore today’s hard truth: It is increasingly not viable for us to do our job if the Caucus is not doing its job.
There is no way to credibly explain away these types of corporate ties, which equate in many voters’ minds to caving in and giving up on the promises people put them in office to fulfill. The CBC Foundation leadership may say that this is how politics works. The reality is that Black people across the country don’t want politics to work this way—and they don’t see it working for them. From everything we have seen, we believe a growing number will refuse to support it.
Though it’s not the first decision of this kind in recent years, the decision of the CBC Foundation to enter into a financial arrangement with Palantir, including the sponsorship of its annual conference in September, 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.
As a reminder, Palantir is an injustice machine. Its impact on people’s lives is not subtle:
- Palantir provides the software to identify and eliminate funding for programs (including grants to community organizations) that have anything to do with equity and diversity. [Wired, February 2, 2026]
- Palantir provides the software for so-called predictive policing that has been shown to be little more than tech-enabled racial profiling, with grave consequences. [The Intercept, January 30, 2021]
- Palantir is the technological operating system for rapidly expanding surveillance programs that destroy lives: including targeting people for illegal and abusive incarceration and deportation. [Tech Policy Press, Sep 24 2026]
- 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. [Tech Crunch, April 19, 2026]
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. Certainly, rejecting Palantir’s financial contributions is a starting point. But it is not an endpoint. 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 Trump administration’s coordinated attack on Black members of Congress has targeted their very ability to remain in office. The redistricting effort they launched this year, unprecedented in modern American politics, though par for the course in countries taken over by authoritarians, is trying to strip Caucus member voters away from them.
As voters have seen their representatives stripped away, however, many are calling the question, What did they do for us anyway? Will it even matter if they’re gone?
The CBC and its foundation must stand with the people whom corporations exploit at every turn. If the first era of the Caucus was defined by the struggle to ensure Black people could finally attain full and complete status as Americans, the next era must build on that continuing struggle by showing that racial justice is not just about civil rights but about all the rights that today’s age of consolidated corporate power threatens.
Black leaders in the past were told they could never hold office. But they changed those rules. They were told they could not win equality, could not pass laws, could not be president. They changed those rules. If there is a rule that politicians cannot serve in Congress without depending on corporations, and in turn, serving them, then today’s Black leaders must change those rules. They are, in fact, best suited to lead that charge.
We need the Congressional Black Caucus to play its unique role. America will neither progress nor survive without it. But 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. We need the CBC to embrace that strategy. Their current strategy is failing us.
You can read and share the letter at droppalantir.org.
Rashad
