Since last March, the Department of Health and Human Services has been using AI tools from Palantir to screen and audit grants, grant applications, and job descriptions for noncompliance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting “gender ideology” and anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), according to a recently published inventory of all use cases HHS had for AI in 2025.
Neither Palantir nor HHS has publicly announced that the company’s software was being used for these purposes. During the first year of Trump’s second term, Palantir earned more than $35 million in payments and obligations from HHS alone. None of the descriptions for these transactions mention this work targeting DEI or “gender ideology.”
The audits have been taking place within HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which funds family and child welfare and oversees the foster and adoption systems. Palantir is the sole contractor charged with making a list of “position descriptions that may need to be adjusted for alignment with recent executive orders.”
In addition to Palantir, the startup Credal AI—which was founded by two Palantir alumni—helped ACF audit “existing grants and new grant applications.” The “AI-based” grant review process, the inventory says, “reviews application submission files and generates initial flags and priorities for discussion.” All relevant information is then routed to the ACF Program Office for final review.
ACF staffers ultimately review any job descriptions, grants, and grant applications that are flagged by AI during a “final review” stage, according to the inventory. It also says that these particular AI use cases are currently “deployed” within ACF, meaning that they are actively being used at the agency.
Last year, ACF paid Credal AI about $750,000 to provide the company’s “Tech Enterprise Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Platform,” but the payment descriptions in the Federal Register do not mention DEI or “gender ideology.”
HHS, ACF, Palantir, and Credal AI did not return WIRED’s requests for comment.
The executive 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 both issued on Trump’s first day in office last year.
The first of these orders demands an end to any policies, programs, contracts, grants that mention or concern DEIA, DEI, “equity,” or “environmental justice,” and charges the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, and the attorney general with leading these efforts.
The second order demands that all “interpretation of and application” of federal laws and policies define “sex” as an “immutable biological classification” and define the only genders as “male” and “female.” It deems “gender ideology” and “gender identity” to be “false” and “disconnected from biological reality.” It also says that no federal funds can be used “to promote gender ideology.”
“Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology,” it reads.
The consequences of Executive Order 14151, targeting DEI, and Executive Order 14168, targeting “gender ideology,” have been felt deeply throughout the country over the past year.
Early last year, the National Science Foundation started to flag any research that contained terms associated with DEI—including relatively general terms, like “female,” “inclusion,” “systemic,” or “underrepresented”—and place it under official review. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began retracting or pausing research that mentioned terms like “LGBT,” “transsexual,” or “nonbinary,” and stopped processing any data related to transgender people. Last July, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration removed an LGBTQ youth service line offered by the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Source: www.wired.com
