Trump administration seeks to halt air pollution lawsuit against xAI

US Department of Justice claims NAACP lawsuit threatens ‘national, economic, and energy security’.The United States government has intervened on the side of Elon Musk’s xAI in a legal dispute over the environmental impact of a $20bn data centre in Tennessee, claiming that efforts to block a related power project threaten national security.In a court motion filed this week, the Department of Justice requested the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing xAI of illegally operating dozens of natural gas turbines at a Southaven, Mississippi facility constructed to power the Colossus 2 data center in nearby Memphis, Tennessee.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Brazilian court convicts Eduardo Bolsonaro of courting US interferencelist 2 of 4Iran will have to leave US hours after every World Cup match, official sayslist 3 of 4Which France and World Cup records did Mbappe break against Senegal?list 4 of 4Democrat calls for Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha’s mother to get US visaend of listThe 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 Energy Act, which allows citizens to seek injunctions and civil penalties against alleged polluters.The NAACP alleges that xAI erected the turbines without obtaining the necessary permits, exposing hundreds of thousands of residents in Mississippi and neighbouring Tennessee to harmful pollutants linked to “increases in asthma, respiratory diseases, heart problems, and certain cancers”.The lawsuit notes that a “much larger share” of residents are Black compared with the US general population.In its motion, filed in a US District Court on Monday, the Justice Department accused the NAACP of threatening “national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for Artificial Intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations”.The motion also claims that the US Constitution vests the power to seek civil penalties “conclusively and preclusively” in the executive branch, including the “discretion to decide when such an enforcement action is unwarranted or inconsistent with federal enforcement priorities”.