HHS Is Using AI Tools From Palantir to Target ‘DEI’ and ‘Gender Ideology’ in Grants

Since past March, the Department of Health and Human Services has been utilizing AI tools from Palantir to surface and audit grants, assistance applications, and occupation descriptions for noncompliance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting “gender ideology” and thing related to diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), according to a precocious published inventory of each usage cases HHS had for AI successful 2025.

Neither Palantir nor HHS has publically announced that the company’s bundle was being utilized for these purposes. During the archetypal twelvemonth of Trump’s 2nd term, Palantir earned much than $35 cardinal successful payments and obligations from HHS alone. None of the descriptions for these transactions notation this enactment targeting DEI oregon “gender ideology.”

The audits person been taking spot wrong HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which funds household and kid payment and oversees the foster and adoption systems. Palantir is the sole contractor charged with making a database of “position descriptions that whitethorn request to beryllium adjusted for alignment with caller enforcement orders.”

In summation to Palantir, the startup Credal AI—which was founded by two Palantir alumni—helped ACF audit “existing grants and caller assistance applications.” The “AI-based” assistance reappraisal process, the inventory says, “reviews exertion submission files and generates archetypal flags and priorities for discussion.” All applicable accusation is past routed to the ACF Program Office for last review.

ACF staffers yet reappraisal immoderate occupation descriptions, grants, and assistance applications that are flagged by AI during a “final review” stage, according to the inventory. It besides says that these peculiar AI usage cases are presently “deployed” wrong ACF, meaning that they are actively being utilized astatine the agency.

Last year, ACF paid Credal AI about $750,000 from ACF to supply the company’s “Tech Enterprise Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Platform,” but the outgo descriptions successful the Federal Register bash not notation DEI oregon “gender ideology.”

HHS, ACF, Palantir, and Credal AI did not instrumentality WIRED’s requests for comment.

The enforcement orders—Executive Order 14151, ”Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” and Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”—were some issued connected Trump’s archetypal time successful bureau past year.

The archetypal of these orders demands an extremity to immoderate policies, programs, contracts, grants that notation oregon interest DEIA, DEI, “equity,” oregon “environmental justice,” and charges the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, and the lawyer wide with starring these efforts.

The 2nd bid demands that each “interpretation of and application” of national laws and policies specify “sex” arsenic an “immutable biologic classification,” specify the lone genders arsenic “male” and “female,” and deems “gender ideology” and “gender identity” to beryllium “false” and “disconnected from biologic reality.” It besides says that nary national funds tin beryllium utilized “to beforehand sex ideology.”

“Each bureau shall measure assistance conditions and grantee preferences and guarantee assistance funds bash not beforehand sex ideology,” it reads.

The consequences of Executive Order 14151, targeting DEI, and Executive Order 14168, targeting “gender ideology,” person been felt profoundly passim the state implicit the past year.

Early past year, the National Science Foundation started to flag any probe that contained presumption associated with DEI—including comparatively wide terms, similar “female,” “inclusion,” “systemic,” oregon “underrepresented”—and spot it nether authoritative review. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began retracting oregon pausing probe that mentioned presumption similar "LGBT," "transsexual," oregon "nonbinary," and stopped processing immoderate information related to transgender people. Last July, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration removed an LGBTQ younker work enactment offered by the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.