According to Talking Points Memo, the Trump-led U.S. Department of Justice recently took a controversial step: on Monday, it filed a motion to intervene as a plaintiff in the lawsuit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) against Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, and requested that the court dismiss the case “with prejudice.” The NAACP originally sued xAI under the citizen enforcement provisions of the Clean Air Act, alleging violations of federal environmental regulations. While the Act explicitly allows the EPA Administrator to “intervene as a matter of right at any time,” the DOJ’s motives in this intervention have come under scrutiny.
In an accompanying memorandum, the DOJ characterized the NAACP’s lawsuit as a “national security threat,” arguing that xAI’s Grok model—used by the Department of Defense in military operations (codenamed “Colossus”)—would be compromised by environmental compliance. The DOJ claimed that enforcing the Clean Air Act against xAI “would not be consistent with federal policy and the public interest.” However, this argument deliberately overlooks a key fact: the Clean Air Act itself is a federal policy enacted based on public interest considerations. Critics note that the DOJ’s action effectively seeks to make federal law inapplicable to a specific company, granting Musk’s firm a special exemption.
