Nurses demand Palantir out!
No evil A.I. in hospitals, government, or society
Staff report
National Nurse magazine - July | Aug | Sept 2026 Issue
On Aug. 27, National Nurses United in eight cities across the country held civil disobedience protests by briefly stopping traffic to demand that their hospital systems, government and elected officials, and other institutions immediately cut ties with the A.I. tech company Palantir. Nurses want their employers to stop buying Palantir products and services, their elected officials to reject Palantir campaign contributions, their governments to stop contracting with Palantir, and investment institutions to divest from its stock.
The actions included visual displays of the deadly costs of Palantir’s products, including its development and operation of ELITE, an application used by federal agents that identifies people for arrest using, in part, improperly obtained Medicaid data.
In each city, nurses placed 50 pairs of baby shoes in the street – one pair of shoes representing every 10 babies who have been detained since President Trump took office. Passersby could also see large images of the heart-wrenching notes written by some of the 6,000 children who have been imprisoned by federal agents since the second Trump term began. The nurses also held large red umbrellas emblazoned with eyes, symbolizing that nurses are keeping an eye on Palantir’s harmful activities.
“Union nurses cannot be silent when our most vulnerable people, babies and children, are being detained by federal immigration agents,” said NNU President Jamie Brown, RN. “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. Nurses aren’t just saying no to Palantir, but we’re calling for our public resources to go toward the benefit of working people, not billionaires and their corporations.”