The Dictatorship
Black Memphians refuse to be the collateral damage to Elon Musk’s ‘progress’
Majority-Black communities in Memphis are under threat from Elon Musk’s AI project
We are known as an “asthma capital” in the U.S., and recent statistics found that we had the most asthma-related ER visits in Tennessee.
By Justin J. Pearson, Tennessee state representative
I live 3 miles from xAI’s South Memphis data center, where Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company has been operating dozens of methane gas turbines without critical — and we believe legally required — environmental permits. My neighbors and I are forced to breathe the pollution this company pumps into our air every day. We smell it. We inhale it. This isn’t just an environmental issue — it’s a public health emergency.
This isn’t just an environmental issue — it’s a public health emergency.
Memphis and Shelby County had a pollution crisis long before Musk and xAI powered up Colossus, a massive supercomputer. The American Lung Association gave us an “F” for air quality for four of the last five years, and we got a D the one year we didn’t get an F. We haven’t met federal ozone standards since 2021. We are known as an “asthma capital” in the U.S., and recent statistics found that we had the most asthma-related ER visits in Tennessee.
Now, in response to this growing threat to the air we breathe, we’re fighting back. Last week, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) sent xAI a notice of intent to sue on behalf of the NAACPa notice that is mandatory under the Clean Air Act. This action is about justice, transparency and our human right to breathe clean air.
Together, the turbines at the xAI data center have a generating capacity that SELC says rivals that of a regional Tennessee Valley Authority power plant. Despite claims from the Shelby County Health Department, the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce and xAI that permits aren’t required for the turbines’ first year of use and xAI’s assertion that it is “operating in compliance with applicable laws,” SELC, which performed a thorough analysis of the turbine models’ specifications and applicable environmental lawdisagrees. It believes xAI’s turbines are stationary engines and therefore require an air permit. SELC asked the county Health Department to shut down the turbines and explain where SELC’s legal opinion is wrong. These requests have not been met.
This is not minor. These permitting requirements exist to protect communities from exposure to hazardous emissions.
City officials celebrate xAI’s arrival as an economic win as they downplay the serious health and environmental risks and impacts.
E&E News reported in May, citing the data from environmental groups it had reviewed, “In just 11 months since the company arrived in Memphis, xAI has become one of Shelby County’s largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides.” Smog is linked to increased rates of asthma and respiratory illnesses. Rather than halt operations, xAI is now asking the Health Department to approve a permit that would allow it to permanently operate 15 gas turbines 24/7.
When 35 turbines were photographed at the site in March, far more than what had been reported, I asked Memphis Mayor Paul Young about them, and he told me only 14 turbines were active and that the rest were being stored there. SELC, however, used thermal imaging to determine that at least 33 turbines were in use. Mayor Young has dismissed xAI’s emissions as “minimal,” despite estimates that the turbines emit 1,200 to 2,000 tons of smog-forming NOx annually. City officials celebrate xAI’s arrival as an economic win as they downplay the serious health and environmental risks and impacts.
An example of this is the irresponsible pollution report the city of Memphis released Tuesday. According to the report, unspecified air monitors were placed in two areas in southwest Memphis and at City Hall downtown on two different days for less than 12 hours each day. The minuscule nature of the testing notwithstanding, the data did not include any testing results for ground-level ozone or smog.
According to AirNowthe federal government’s website that is home to the U.S. Air Quality Index, ground-level ozone, a major component of smog, is one of five major pollutants the Environmental Protection Agency measures to establish a particular community’s air quality index. Still, the city described its limited findings as “definitive and reassuring.” We deserve better than such misleading reports sanctioned by our mayor.
This pollution isn’t impacting majority-white suburbs in East Memphis or Collierville. It’s impacting South Memphis, a historically redlined, majority-Black, working-class community long targeted for industrial zoning. Our neighborhoods have been burdened for generations by landfills, chemical plants and toxic industries. xAI’s turbines continue that legacy. Once again, our health is being threatened for someone else’s profit.
When children in our community struggle to breathe, when our elders are rushed to the ER during Code Orange air days, we’re told this is the cost of economic progress. But we refuse to allow our lives to be collateral damage for this so-called “progress.”
We refuse to allow our lives to be collateral damage for this so-called “progress.”
Now xAI is expanding. The company recently acquired 100 acres and a 1 million-square-foot warehouse in Whitehaven — another majority-Black Memphis neighborhood — to house a second data center just 8 miles from Colossus and a half-mile from John P. Freeman Schoolattended by students in grades K-8. Although the Memphis Chamber of Commerce claims xAI will not use turbines at the site, according to SELC, the permit application xAI affiliate CTC Property submitted on behalf of xAI to the EPA contemplates operating 40 to 90 gas turbines at the site. Independent filings and local reporting also suggest the company may partner with a new corporate entity, Stateline Power Solutions, to place these turbines in Southavenabout a mile from the Whitehaven facility.
Pollution does not stop at state lines. I recently joined Southaven faith leaders and political leaders to speak out against this expansion. We deserve clean air whether we are in Tennessee, Mississippi or Arkansas, and this project threatens it.
The truth is out. The people are watching. And we are demanding accountability. The people of South Memphis and Southaven deserve better. We deserve leaders who protect our right to clean air — not ones who excuse corporate pollution. We deserve a permitting process that upholds the law — not one that allows flagrant violations to go unchallenged.
To the Shelby County Health Department and elected officials: Deny the permit. Do not reward what we believe to be illegal activity. Do not validate secrecy. Do not let our communities pay the price for a billionaire’s ambition.
Deny the permit, protect the people and deliver justice. Our people-powered movement is not going anywhere. We will stand as Davids against Goliath and win.
Justin J. Pearson
Justin J. Pearson represents the 86th District in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
WASHINGTON (AP) — National Guard members and U.S. Park Police patrolled the deck around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday as President Donald Trump’s administration faces a self-imposed deadline to fix a botched renovation before the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.
The patrols came two days after Trump said authorities had made “multiple arrests” of people he insisted were responsible for damage to the peeling coating after an algae bloom occurred. The liner was installed as part of his $14 million-plus project.
The president has confirmed the problems most likely require draining the pool again for liner repairs and he promised a quick fix. Without offering substantiation, he also said vandals dumped fertilizer in the pool and slashed the coating with a box cutter.
But the timeline was not clear Monday, with the White House saying damaged areas are still being assessed. Contractors and federal workers in recent days have been using chemicals and ozone nanobubbles to combat the algae.
Trump pitched the original improvements as intended to clean, beautify and reinforce an iconic site that he said had become dilapidated and dirty because of previous presidents’ neglect. Algae has plagued the pool for a century, and Trump insisted that a newly installed “American flag blue” coating, which he selected himself, would turn the pool into a gleaming expanse along the National Mall.
Yet within weeks of Trump declaring the rehabilitation completed in time for Independence Day, the water was plagued by a vivid green algae bloom that clouded the pool’s coating. A piece of liner, about 4 square feet, was observed Friday partially floating in the pool. The Associated Press saw additional pieces in the water Monday.
Via social media, the president has blamed the problems on “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE!” He asserted Monday on Truth Social that intentional damages include a “300 foot long gash” and that “chemicals have been illegally placed in the water.” A day earlier, Trump posted, “Work will begin immediately on fixing the seriously vandalized Reflecting Pool.”
At an executive order signing on Monday, the president said five people had been arrested and five more were under suspicion, and he deflected blame for the pool’s maintenance issues: “I can’t help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up.” He has not backed up those claims, and even if anyone has deliberately peeled or cut the lining, that would not explain the algae bloom that appeared more intensely than what typically occurred before the renovation.
Images showing that Trump’s project apparently backfired boomeranged across social media last week, drawing crowds of onlookers eager to see the effects themselves. An unknown number ended up being detained by federal authorities.
One man arrested was David Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Maryland. A former Olympic canoe racer, Hearn told The Associated Press that he reached into the pool because he wanted to examine the peeling new coating. He said he briefly touched a chunk that was still attached to the side of the pool, then let go shortly after a park worker told him to. Hearn said he was then detained by National Guard troops and Park Police for five hours before being released Friday night.
“I’m a curious citizen,” Hearn said in a telephone interview. “I reached down to see what it felt like. It was very rubbery.”
The Park Police did not immediately respond Monday to AP’s questions about how many arrests were made and whether any charges had been filed. Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department said Monday that the agency is not involved.
The White House said Monday that any arrests have been made only by the U.S. Park Police.
It was not immediately apparent what criminal or civil violation someone might commit reaching into the pool. Trump, in one of his Truth Social posts, cited laws against defacing monuments as grounds for imprisoning anyone harming the pool.
___
Barrow reported from Atlanta. Katie Vogel contributed reporting from Washington.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.
One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.
The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.
The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”
Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.
“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
The Dictatorship
Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’
About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.
The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.
But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.
But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.
The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.
The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”
On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.
On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.
The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.
It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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