Illinois nurses rally to demand Senator Dick Durbin cut ties with Palantir

Chicago, IL – On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 15, over 200 National Nurses United (NNU) nurses from Illinois and across the country held a rally and picket outside of Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s condo in Lakeview.

They demanded that Durbin reject and return all campaign contributions from Palantir Technologies, the AI tech company responsible for collecting civilians’ personal data on behalf of government agencies such as the US Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Department of War, and the Israeli military. About 15% of Palantir’s revenue comes from healthcare, and its software is currently managing 21% of U.S. hospital beds.

Brenda Langford is a registered nurse at Cook County and is one of the vice presidents of NNU. Langford spoke about how Palantir’s Timpani and Inspire scheduling software affect the day-to-day lives of nurses.

“At face value, [Timpani and Inspire] do a terrible job of what they’re supposed to do,” Langford stated. “They’re inflexible and don’t accommodate nurse’s needs. They mess up our schedules, they don’t provide a good mix of skills and experience among nurses for any given shift and ultimately they, of course, tend to short staff. We have learned of ICU units where nurses were tripled with patients because of these apps. This is unsafe!”

Langford’s words were met with strong agreement from the crowd. “On the back end,” Langford continued, “nurses are worried for the safety and privacy of themselves and their patients. Through all these products, Palantir has access to a whole host of sensitive data. Nurses need to download Timpani and Inspire on their personal phones, accept the terms, and input their entire profile into these apps in order to be able to use them.”

The nurses who spoke expressed concern not only for themselves, but for their patients, particularly those with vulnerable immigration status.

“The Trump administration and ICE has contracted Palantir to compile data on immigrants for their deportation machines, and to make it easier for the federal agencies to surveil, detain, and even kill those of us who protest and resist,” said Cathy Kennedy, president of NNU and California Nurses Association. “Recently in Maine, they killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, and in Houston, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, like they killed VA RN Alex Pretti, and mother Renee Good.”

Maria Heavener, an elementary school teacher and member of the Chicago Teachers Union, spoke to her encounter with ICE during Operation Midway Blitz last October. “They came within feet of our school and started deploying tear gas at our community members while our students were outside at recess,” Heavener stated. “[Palantir is] profiting off of this despair that they’re putting families into. And then they’re taking that profit and turning around and buying our representatives!”

Elinor Keener of Anti-War Committee – Chicago explained that in addition to being used to criminalize and deport immigrants in the US, Palantir helps Israel conduct its genocide in Gaza by developing “kill lists.” With very little human oversight, its AI software surveils Palestinians in order to choose targets for assassination and arrest, and then plans a sequence of attacks designed to kill the target. Those attacks often kill civilians near the target as well. When mass murder is built into the software, it is not ‘collateral damage’ – it’s genocide,” said Keener.

Keener then went on to describe how the Illinois State Board of Investment, which includes State Treasurer Michael Frerichs, nearly tripled its investment in Palantir over the past year. However, the board also quietly divested $33 million from companies complicit in genocide, apartheid and ICE attacks, which they tried to obscure from their 2025 annual report. “They hid this because elected officials like Michael Frerichs and Dick Durbin don’t want to admit that when we organize, we shape the political landscape,” Keener stated.

Despite the 90-degree heat and strong afternoon sun, the crowd at the rally was energized and engaged. The organizers had planned to hand-deliver their petition to the door of Senator Durbin’s condominium, but building security refused to let them inside. Undeterred, the crowd took the street and rallied there instead. “So, Senator Durbin,” Cathy Kennedy said, “we nurses wanna know, whose side are you on? Are you with our nurses, our patients, our communities; or are you with Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, JD Vance, and Donald Trump? Which side are you on?”

Supporters of the call to remove Palantir from the healthcare system can sign the NNU’s petition and follow their Save Our Hospitals Tour.

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