U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters over the North Atlantic as he returns to Washington from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, aboard Air Force One, U.S., January 22, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
An analyst flagged the "most disturbing" part of President Donald Trump's administration's efforts to collect data about Americans and their political enemies.
Over the last several months, the Trump administration has sought to collect data about Americans in different instances under the guise of creating a database to combat antisemitism. For instance, the Trump administration received a list of Jewish students from Barnard College as part of a settlement with the school. Those students then began receiving text messages from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asking them to confirm their Jewish identity.
Questions about how the administration is using that data grew louder this week, when it was revealed that the Department of Government Efficiency turned over data to a political advocacy group to help overturn election results in certain states, The Bulwark's Catherine Rampell pointed out in a new article.
Rampell also flagged the "most disturbing" part of the scheme in the article.
"It’s becoming clearer that some of the most disturbing developments don’t involve data the administration is suppressing, but rather data it’s collecting—in some cases illegally—and the ways those data can be weaponized against perceived enemies," Rampell wrote.
She added that the databases the government is creating "sound[] an awful lot like twentieth-century government databases of Commies, wrongthinkers, and other political enemies."
"So I ask you, my fellow Americans: Do you feel safer yet?" Rampell wrote.