Hundreds of registered nurses, joined by patients and community allies, stopped traffic in acts of civil disobedience across eight U.S. cities Thursday, demanding hospitals and elected officials cut ties with the AI and data-analytics firm Palantir. [1] The action, organized by National Nurses United, spanned Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Portland, Maine, Asheville, North Carolina, Austin and New Orleans, with local follow-on coverage continuing into Friday. [1]
The visual centerpiece of the protests was 50 pairs of baby shoes placed in the street in each city — one pair representing every ten babies detained by federal immigration agents since President Trump took office, according to NNU, alongside displayed images of notes written by some of the more than 6,000 children the union says have been imprisoned by federal agents during the current administration. [1] Nurses carried large red umbrellas printed with eyes, meant to symbolize the union watching Palantir's activities, and pointed specifically to ELITE, an application the union says federal agents use to identify people for arrest, built in part on improperly obtained Medicaid data. [1]
NNU President Jamie Brown, RN, framed the action as inseparable from the union's broader fight over hospital funding. "Union nurses cannot be silent when our most vulnerable people, babies and children, are being detained by federal immigration agents," Brown said. "While our patients and neighbors are living in fear of immigration raids enabled by Palantir, our hospitals are facing huge cuts and our patients are facing mounting health care costs because of H.R. 1." Brown put a number on the tradeoff: "What we know is the money spent on ICE detention could fund health care for at least 12 million children every single year." [1] H.R. 1, the 2025 federal budget bill, cut more than $1 trillion in Medicaid and Medicare funding, which NNU-commissioned research says puts more than 600 financially vulnerable hospitals nationwide at risk of closures or service cuts. [1]
That framing — Palantir as the connective tissue between immigration enforcement, hospital budget cuts and, separately, Gaza — dominated the day's public messaging more than any specific claim of clinical harm inside a hospital. Allied speakers at the rallies leaned into exactly that connection. Kenny Morris of the American Friends Service Committee said Palantir "has no place in our hospitals, our utilities, our investments, or our government." Olivia DiNucci of CodePink DC called Palantir a "common enemy" uniting the fight for Medicare for All with opposition to what she called "the genocide in Gaza" and to mass surveillance and deportations. Dani Noble of Jewish Voice for Peace said Palantir's technology "facilitates ICE terror" and "enables the Israeli military's genocide on Gaza," adding that it "should have no place in our hospitals." [1] Palantir has a contract to support Israel's Ministry of Defense, which the union's press materials cite alongside findings from Amnesty International, a UN Special Committee and other groups that have concluded Israel is committing genocide in its conduct of the Gaza war. [1]
What the union's own materials say considerably less about is documented harm to patients from Palantir's hospital-facing products specifically. The company's technology, branded Timpani or HCA Inspire, is used by the country's largest for-profit hospital chain, HCA Healthcare, for nurse scheduling and staffing — a system NNU says removes local nursing managers from staffing decisions in favor of "an anonymous office in Nashville." [1] MaineHealth, another NNU-represented system, uses Palantir tools as well and has, per the union, refused to disclose the extent of that cooperation or how patient and worker data are protected. [1] Beyond describing these tools as "untested and unregulated technology" that risks "replacing clinical judgement," the press release cites no specific incident of a patient harmed by a Palantir-driven staffing decision — the claim rests on the general premise that automated scheduling is dangerous, not on a documented case.
Palantir's federal footprint has expanded rapidly regardless. From 2009 to 2025 the company received $2.5 billion in federal funding, a figure the union says has grown sharply in the past year alone: a $10 billion Army agreement in July 2025, a $30 million Department of Homeland Security contract to build a deportation-targeting system, and a $1 billion DHS contract signed in February 2026. [1] In the hospital sector, the union says Palantir now manages scheduling or staffing functions covering more than one-fifth of U.S. hospital beds nationally. [1]
Whether that reach translates into the kind of documented patient-safety harm the union's rhetoric implies is, on the evidence NNU itself has published, still an open question — one the union's own press release answers mostly by pointing to Palantir's role in immigration enforcement and its defense contracts rather than to a specific case of a nurse-staffing algorithm hurting a patient.
-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago