Palantir’s Alex Karp Says He’s a Progressive After Blue Wave Election

Nobody is buying Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s claim that he was a Democrat this whole time, right?

In an exclusive interview with Politico’s Playbook, the technocrat posed as a staunch progressive, following Democrats’ sweeping midterm election victories in the House and Senate.

“I’ve been a Democrat my whole life. I grew up in a far-left environment. I know more about being a progressive than almost anybody on the planet, and I absolutely believe Palantir—all of our products are essentially progressive,” Karp said in an interview where he used the word “progressive” eight times to describe himself.

This is a pretty significant shift from just eight months ago, when the CEO appeared desperate to align his technology with GOP political strategy as a method to sap political capital away from the Trump administration’s enemies.

“This technology disrupts humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters, and makes their economic power less, and increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters,” Karp said in March, admitting that his technology was “dangerous societally” but would allow us to “be American” in the future.

Now Karp claims that his company is chiefly concerned with “economic justice” and that he believes that Trump’s immigration policies “went too far.” Of course, Palantir’s technologies were essential in implementing the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation agenda. The company even developed an app that provided ICE agents with a digital map populated by potential deportation targets.

The technocrat’s self-proclaimed “anti-woke” company reaped billions of dollars in federal contracts during the second Trump administration. The company just hired former Republican Senator Jon Tester as an adviser ahead of likely congressional investigations.

“My giving is equal Democrat, Republican,” Karp told Politico. “I can tell you, without going into things I’m not going to disclose, I’m very balanced, and everyone in the political arena knows it. And I’ll tell you what, I’m also not the village idiot.”

Karp may not be the village idiot, but he clearly thinks the American public isn’t smart enough to see through his ridiculous facade.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is losing support from even moderate members of the Democratic caucus.

Virginia Senator Mark Warner is not committing to supporting Schumer for majority leader next year, the Virginia Scope reports, telling the publication: “We got to reflect in leadership the real talents.” Warner’s new comments follow his praise for Schumer on Tuesday for raising an “enormous” amount of money for Democrats in the midterms and for recruiting many of the winners this election.

Warner’s stance follows Senator Bernie Sanders, who said in a press conference on  Tuesday, “Nobody works harder than Chuck Schumer, but in my view, the time is now for change, and I will not be supporting Chuck to be reelected as the Democratic leader.”

Other senators and senators-elect refusing to commit to Schumer include Elissa Slotkin, Abdul El-Sayed, Richard Blumenthal, Juliana Stratton, Peggy Flanagan, Adam Hamilton, Troy Jackson, Chris Pappas, Annie Andrews, and James Talarico.

The alternative candidate gaining steam is Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is open to the idea and criticized Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for siding “with the crypto industry” and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a press conference on Tuesday.

“I am listening to all the people from around the country that were calling for big change,” Van Hollen said, noting that two of the Democrats’ incoming senators, El-Sayed and Flanagan, didn’t receive support from Schumer and the DSCC. “I am in the process right now of calling my colleagues.”

The White House is threatening Democrats in Congress, warning them that investigating President Donald Trump could cross the line into criminal action.

Punchbowl News reports that White House counsel Will Scharf sent a letter on Monday to Democratic Representative Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, saying that congressional investigations “must further a legitimate executive task; Congress cannot employ them to exercise powers of criminal prosecution assigned to the Executive and the Judiciary.”

Garcia and his fellow Democrats have made “it abundantly clear that any forthcoming investigative processes will be deployed to harass and aggrandize, rather than to advance any legitimate legislative end,” Scharf claims, citing statements by incoming Democrats calling for the prosecution of ICE agents, trials for tech executives, and hearings for Cabinet secretaries like embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The letter is an extreme attempt to intimidate House Democrats into backing off Trump and his legally questionable actions, and it makes a mockery of the constitutional separation of powers, as well as checks and balances between the three branches of government. Scharf is taking a questionable Republican position that effectively says that Congress has no critical oversight over the executive branch.

The warning is rich, considering how the Trump administration has pushed sham prosecutions against members of Congress who told military and intelligence personnel not to follow illegal orders or who protested against ICE. That’s to say nothing of the targeting of many of Trump’s perceived enemies. It seems that the White House knows it has something to hide and thinks of itself as above the law.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has 11 Democratic House members to thank for tanking the nascent effort to impeach him.

House Republicans blocked Representative Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment against Hegseth from reaching the floor by a 211–204 vote. While Republicans were initially concerned they lacked the party votes to block the resolution, it was 11 absent Democratic lawmakers who handed them a victory.

Their names are:

• Melanie Stansbury (New Mexico)
• Marilyn Strickland (Washington)
• Julia Brownley (California)
• Lou Correa (California)
• Laura Gillen (New York)
• Steven Horsford (Nevada)
• Jonathan Jackson (Illinois)
• Nancy Pelosi (California)
• Brittany Pettersen (Colorado)
• Haley Stevens (Michigan)
• Frederica Wilson (Florida)

Some of those truant Democratic lawmakers said they were stuck in “bumper-to-bumper” traffic on their way back from a new member reception held by the Elect Democratic Women PAC, according to Axios’s Andrew Solender. That group’s offshoot, the EDW Action Fund, has served as a major pass-through for funds from United Democracy Project, a super PAC formed by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It’s not clear which members were in attendance at the event.

Representative Katherine Clark, who as Democratic whip is responsible for organizing her party’s House members ahead of a vote, is also one of the founding members of EDW. Clark was not absent for the vote, and called the results a “disgrace.”

Of the 11 Democrats who missed the Hegseth vote, eight have received support from EDW or its action group, including Brownley, who sits on the organization’s executive board, and Stansbury, who serves on the board of directors.

House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, said she missed the vote because she flew back to San Francisco for the Swords to Plowshares 30th Annual Veterans Day Celebration. Horsford’s office said he had a personal emergency, and Correa previously said he was undergoing a medical procedure.

The resounding Democratic failure comes amid a tidal wave of calls for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to step down following sweeping Democratic victories in the House and Senate. Jeffries faces criticism for failing to unite Democrats to mount a compelling challenge against the Trump administration. Now it appears that he couldn’t even get them to all show up for one important vote.

After the vote, Jeffries told Politico, “I haven’t had a conversation with anyone on the floor team about what may or may not have happened in terms of the Hegseth resolution, but this is not the end of it. It’s just the beginning.”

President Donald Trump called the results of Tuesday’s vote a total “exoneration” of Hegseth.

This story has been updated.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen is plotting out his position against Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

“I am listening to all the people from around the country that were calling for big change,” Van Hollen said at the Popular Mandate national conference Tuesday, according to Semafor reporter David Weigel. “I am in the process right now of calling my colleagues.”

“We just saw democracy in America in action. We should bring a little more democracy to the United States Senate,” Van Hollen continued. “We have two newly-elected senators who would not be there if Schumer and the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] had their way.”

Van Hollen then drew a line in the sand, arguing that Schumer and the DSCC had “sided with the crypto industry” and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known by the acronym AIPAC.

A wave of Democratic voices have been opposing Schumer’s leadership and establishment politics since the party won the majority in Congress in last week’s elections. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen has emerged as a potential alternative, indicating a rising interest in progressive leadership. His office has received an “outpouring of calls and is now in active listening mode,” one source told Politico’s Playbook.

Van Hollen’s national profile rose last year when he traveled out of the country to visit his constituent Kilmar Ábrego García after García was illegally deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notoriously lethal maximum security prison, CECOT.

Whether or not Van Hollen will officially commit himself against Schumer remains to be seen, though the Marylander has already started to draft an opposition platform that could put pressure on Schumer’s politics. On Tuesday, Van Hollen declared that the U.S. cannot spend “a penny more” on the Iran war, daring Donald Trump to either stop funding the war or face the possibility of a government shutdown.

So far, at least 10 major senators or senators-elect have either peeled away from Schumer outright or indicated interest in a different Senate majority leader. Another 14 have not yet committed as to whether they will support Schumer, according to an analysis published Monday by Primary Democrats. Altogether, that’s 24 Democrats—or nearly half of the at least 54 Democratic seats that will dominate the upper chamber come January.

But Schumer remains undeterred by the mounting opposition.

“I’m confident I will be elected majority leader,” Schumer said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. “Our caucus is really united in focusing on bringing down costs, on ending the corruption, on ending the chaos, on ending the war. We have great unity in our caucus and I’ll be proud to lead as majority leader.”