Jennica Pounds, the data scientist known online as DataRepublican, is drawing fire once again after unveiling an interactive database that critics warn could be used to track Americans by their political ties.

Pounds, a former DOGE volunteer who was publicly identified in 2025 after years of operating anonymously, had first drawn a mass following with a crowdsourced database mapping federal spending and the funding chains of nonprofits and NGOs. On Thursday, she announced what she calls the DSA Explorer — a clickable map of the Democratic Socialists of America and what she described as the "wider anti-imperialist solidarity network." She said the project draws on more than a year of research.

The DSA, founded in 1982, describes itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States, and its members have included members of Congress such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

"Click any org, person, or project and walk the network one tie at a time," Pounds wrote on X. "Start at DSA and see where it leads."

The tool lets users trace links between organizations, individuals, and projects connected to the socialist group. Pounds billed the release as a preview of a broader relaunch, DataRepublican v2.0, timed ahead of her book UNELECTED, written with Joshua Lisec — co-author of the 2024 book "Unhumans" with Jack Posobiec — and due out Oct. 13. She added that she could build similar maps for "the Soros network, democracy organizations, and much more."

The launch set off immediate alarm bells.

Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, called it a "McCarthyite database tracking Americans based on party affiliation," and noted that Pounds "idiotically outed herself as a secret Pentagon employee last week." The comparison invoked the 1950s, when investigations led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and other congressional committees publicized alleged communist ties and fueled the blacklist era that cost many Americans their jobs.

Writer Pedro L. Gonzalez went further, describing Pounds as "a special government employee creating tools that will be used to intimidate the public and go after dissenters under the pretext of fighting a domestic terror threat." A special government employee is a temporary federal appointment generally capped at 130 days of work per year. His warning came as the administration faces accusations of inventing a terror threat to target charities.

Will Sommer of The Bulwark added: "A secret Dept of Defense employee has built a database to track American citizens by their political affiliations. The Pentagon still refuses to say what her job description is."

Another user mocked the project as "just helping my government do the thing that right wingers have been saying is their biggest fear for decades."

The alarms also come amid reports that a data firm was building "detailed portraits of Americans" on Trump's order, and that DOGE turned AI loose on federal workers to flag hostility to the president.