![\"Musk\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26134424838385-1781667504.jpg\")
Elon Musk listens to a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a state dinner with US President Donald Trump at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on May 14, 2026 [Mark Schiefelbein\/AP]<\/p>\nUS Department of Justice claims NAACP lawsuit threatens \u2018national, economic, and energy security\u2019.<\/p>\n
The United States government has intervened on the side of Elon Musk\u2019s xAI in an environmental dispute over a $20bn data centre in Tennessee, claiming that efforts to block a related power project threaten national security.<\/p>\n
In a court motion filed this week, the Department of Justice requested the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing the AI company of illegally operating dozens of natural gas turbines constructed to power the Colossus 2 data centre in Memphis, Tennessee.<\/p>\n
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest civil rights group for African Americans, filed the lawsuit in April under the 1963 Clean Air Act, which allows citizens to seek injunctions and civil penalties against alleged polluters.<\/p>\n
The NAACP alleges that xAI built the turbines, located in nearby Southaven, Mississippi, without obtaining the necessary permits, exposing hundreds of thousands of residents to harmful pollutants linked to \u201cincreases in asthma, respiratory diseases, heart problems, and certain cancers\u201d.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit notes that a \u201cmuch larger share\u201d of residents are Black compared with the US general population.<\/p>\n
In its motion, filed in a US District Court on Monday, the Justice Department accused the NAACP of threatening \u201cnational, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War\u2019s military operations\u201d.<\/p>\n
The motion also claims that the US Constitution vests the power to seek civil penalties \u201cconclusively and preclusively\u201d in the executive branch, including the \u201cdiscretion to decide when such an enforcement action is unwarranted or inconsistent with federal enforcement priorities\u201d.<\/p>\n
Adam Gustafson, the top prosecutor at the Justice Department\u2019s environment and natural resources division, said in a statement that the government would \u201cnot sit idly by while private organisations use environmental laws to undermine our national security\u201d.<\/p>\n
xAI, which is a subsidiary of Musk\u2019s SpaceX, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk listens to a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a state dinner with US President Donald Trump at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on May 14, 2026 [Mark Schiefelbein\/AP]<\/p>\n
Earthjustice, an advocacy group representing the NAACP in the lawsuit, condemned the intervention as a \u201cmassive power grab\u201d by President Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump\u2019s Justice Department wants to shield Elon Musk\u2019s data center company, xAI, from being held accountable for its illegal pollution \u2013 and it\u2019s attempting to grab power from impacted communities, the courts, and Congress to do so,\u201d Laura Thoms, director of enforcement for Earthjustice, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no moral or legal precedent for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, described the Trump administration\u2019s argument as a \u201cbrazen attempt\u201d to limit the enforcement of the Clean Air Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s based on a radical notion that the executive branch can dismiss lawsuits brought by citizen groups that Congress has authorised based on no rationale at all,\u201d Carlson told Al Jazeera, adding that the Justice Department\u2019s position would let \u201cpolluters off the hook even for blatant violations of the law\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis motion is also just one of many ways in which the administration is undermining efforts to protect air quality,\u201d Carlson said.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has cultivated close ties with Musk, the world\u2019s first trillionaire, tapping the tech titan as a temporary cost-cutting tsar and using xAI\u2019s flagship model Grok in the Pentagon\u2019s drive to become an \u201cAI-enabled fighting force\u201d.<\/p>\n
In testimony in support of Monday\u2019s motion, Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon\u2019s top official for AI, said that Grok had been used to launch more than 2,000 munitions at 2,000 targets within the first 96 hours of the US-Israel war on Iran.<\/p>\n
If Grok cannot be deployed and upgraded due to \u201climitations in energy supply or limited reserve compute capability\u201d, numerous tools used by the Pentagon would be \u201cseverely impacted\u201d, Stanley said in a declaration made under oath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Department of Justice claims NAACP lawsuit threatens \u2018national, economic, and energy security\u2019. The United States government has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,4868,101,192,3,74,21,1209],"class_list":["post-708988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-business-and-economy","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-news","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}