DOJ Takes Elon Musk’s Side in NAACP Lawsuit Against xAI for Polluting Black Neighborhoods
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: As the SpaceX IPO grabbed headlines this week, rocketing Elon Musk to trillionaire status, the Department of Justice has now intervened on behalf of SpaceX in a civil rights lawsuit over potential violations of the Clean Air Act involving one of its xAI data centers. The NAACP and environmental groups sued the company in April, saying it is illegally operating dozens of gas-burning turbines in Mississippi, near homes, schools and churches in north Mississippi and nearby Memphis, Tennessee. In a motion filed by the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division on Monday, the DOJ asked the court to throw out the lawsuit, accusing the NAACP of threatening, quote, “American national, economic, and energy security” by seeking to shut off power needed for AI development.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to the capital of California, to Sacramento, where we’re joined by Abre’ Conner, director of the NAACP’s Center for Environmental and Climate Justice.
Lay out your response to SpaceX acquiring Musk’s AI company, xAI, and the lawsuit of the NAACP.
ABRE’ CONNER: Yeah. Well, we already were in the fight of our lives with communities by fighting a billionaire who decided to go into a predominantly Black community, first in Memphis, utilizing mass turbines that were polluting the community, and then copy-and-pasting that same type of project in Southaven, Mississippi. And then, whenever you now move into a place where now there is a trillionaire who is making decisions and feeling as though they don’t — he does not have to necessarily follow the Clean Air Act, that’s a problem.
We filed a lawsuit because the Clean Air Act is still the law of the land. You cannot actually just go into a community, start polluting, and not actually try to get the permits. Regardless of who is potentially in office, the Trump administration, that does not mean that the law does not apply to you. And so, that was why we first filed our lawsuit in Southaven. We then filed a motion for preliminary injunction, because there are now nearly 60 methane gas turbines that are operating in these frontline communities. And we are saying to the court, you know, that there needs to be action more soon.
And once we filed our case, we started to hear rumblings that the U.S. Department of Justice was planning to get involved, because they do have to make that information public. And what we found out, unfortunately, was that for the first time, the U.S. Department of Justice, even though their mission is supposed to be to protect people, civil rights, the public interest, that they are intervening in a way to support a trillionaire, in a way that they’re saying that national security does not necessarily mean that it’s protecting the people who are having to live and suffer from methane gas turbines every single day, that the security of whatever this Iran war or memo, or whatever that is, is more important than the people who are actually being harmed every single day.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Abre’, as you said, I mean, it’s quite extraordinary for the U.S. to intervene on behalf of a polluter rather than to intervene to enforce the law. If you could talk about the significance, though, of this lawsuit, the NAACP’s lawsuit, being heard in the 5th Circuit, which is a conservative appeals court, which would suggest that perhaps the Department of Justice has an advantage? Is that correct?
ABRE’ CONNER: Well, what we know to be the fact is that the Clean Air Act, regardless of who the judge is, regardless of who the court is, that that’s still the law. And we know that it’s important for us to make the case, when we’re in court, that this is not — that any type of executive order that is being utilized to greenlight these types of projects, that’s not the law. And so, we’re continuing to move forward. We have our hearing for our motion for preliminary injunction in a little over a month. And so, that’s important. You know, it’s important that we’re going to move forward. It’s important that, regardless of who the judge is, regardless of the court, that we are still utilizing what is the actual law, which is that you cannot move forward with a gas plant the size of what xAI and Elon Musk is trying to operate without actually following the law.
Now, we recognize that many of the individuals who are listed on the U.S. Department of Justice’s intervention are political appointees. However, it’s also important to recognize that, as attorneys, we have an obligation to actually uphold the rule of law, to uphold our oath, to make sure that we have the ethical obligation to actually share what the law is as it is now. And the law is that if you want to operate methane gas turbines in a community, that you have to get permits. That’s not up for debate. The law also stands that if the government does not jump in to actually do something about that pollution, that the communities, that everyday people have the opportunity to actually bring those cases, to actually move forward and say, “We are going to hold the polluters accountable.” And that is exactly what we’re doing.
In this type of situation, not only is the U.S. Department of Justice’s argument that they should be the ones that should make the final decisions, but that the court, in some way, that they actually don’t get to make that choice, either. That’s a problem for democracy overall. That’s something that we all should be concerned about. We should be concerned about this type of authoritarian rule to say that a trillionaire and an administration that is moving forward in a way of bullying everyday people and civil rights organizations, that they should be the ones to make the decisions about our health, about pollution in communities, about stopping sacrifice zones from being furthered because of an agenda that does not serve everyday people.
AMY GOODMAN: Attorney Abre’ Conner, we want to thank you for being with us, director of the NAACP’s Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, speaking to us from Sacramento, California.
Coming up, we go to the acclaimed Nigerian British photographer and activist Misan Harriman, the subject of a new documentary that’s opening here in New York called Shoot the People. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Finally Return” by Mariee Siou.
