Data Centers
BREAKING: Trump Admin Tells Judge it Expects She’ll Bar it from Fighting NAACP’s Suit against Musk Co.’s Data Center
Trump Administration lawyers have told a federal judge overseeing the NAACP’s lawsuit against xAI over its Colossus 2 data center that it expects she will deny the EPA’s effort to enter the case on the side of Elon Musk’s company.
Administration lawyers have argued they need to intervene in the case to get it thrown out, in large part because xAI’s data centers are vital to national security and military operations. It’s previously said they helped with a recent launch of 2,000 missiles in a conflict, and that military systems rely on xAI’s Grok for critical operations.
The NAACP is suing on behalf of its members who live in Southaven, Mississippi, who live close to the data center’s gas generators that spew pollutants into the air; they filed their suit under the protections of the Clean Air Act.
The case is sitting before U.S. District Court Judge Debra M. Brown in the Northern District of Mississippi. Brown was appointed by then-President Barack Obama and sworn in in 2013. She is the district’s chief judge.
“The United States understands that this Court intends to deny the Amended Motion for Intervention and Dismissal, but that amended motion has not yet been denied,” administration lawyers wrote in the three-page filing.
“If September 10 passes without entry of a written order on the amended motion, the United States will treat that as a denial, as is necessary to protect its interests. And in the event this Court denies the amended motion (formally or constructively), the United States reserves the right to formally move for a stay of proceedings pending appeal as warranted at that time.”
They are demanding that Brown rule on the administration’s motion to enter the case and argue for its dismissal by Sept. 10, so they can quickly appeal any denial of the motion.
In addition to saying the case should be thrown out in its entirety due to national security and military concerns, administration lawyers say EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin should be allowed to intervene.
The Clean Air Act, it contends, allows citizens to file their own private lawsuits when the federal government fails to act in a matter; in this case, they say Zeldin has decided not to block xAI’s gas generators, and that the decision to do nothing constitutes federal action.
xAI is owned by SpaceX, another Elon Musk company that recently filed an initial public offering that, briefly, pushed Musk into trillionaire status.