This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action, and produced in partnership with The Guardian. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage shows xAI […]
Elon Musk
Posted inEducation, HBCUs, Politics & Policy, Student Loans
Fate of HBCU Funding Uncertain as Trump Moves to Dismantle Education Department
In a move that could have disproportionate impacts on Black students and families, the Trump administration announced this month that it will relocate certain responsibilities out of the U.S. Department of Education in an effort to strip the agency of much of its authority. This includes plans to transfer several key programs — including those […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Partner Content
Inside the Memphis Chamber of Commerce’s Push for Elon Musk’s xAI Data Center
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with MLK50. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. Marilyn Gooch was already skeptical about one of her newest neighbors, xAI’s supercomputing facility, when her cousin walked across the street in June with a blue mailer from the […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice, Politics & Policy
A Historic Black Community Takes On the World’s Richest Man Over Environmental Racism
Last summer, Elon Musk quietly transformed a portion of a South Memphis, Tennessee, community established by a group of formerly enslaved people in 1863 into what the world’s wealthiest man called “Colossus” — the planet’s most powerful supercomputer. The artificial intelligence venture turned an old manufacturing plant into a powerful 550-acre supercomputer designed to train […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
Black Milwaukee Voters Say No to Musk, Yes to Reproductive Rights
It was a frigid spring day shortly before polls closed in Wisconsin. Chanita Edwards and her daughter, Chamari, left their polling place in Milwaukee’s North Side with two concerns: Elon Musk and reproductive rights. “I voted because I’m a woman and those rights are very important to me, especially abortion rights, and I’m a student,” […]
Posted inHealth
CDC Employees Say Layoffs Under Trump Hit Black and Marginalized Staff Hardest
Employees at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are accusing the Trump administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) of laying off Black CDC workers at higher rates than other racial demographic groups. Three employees — two of whom received layoff notices on Tuesday — told Capital B Atlanta […]
Posted inFederal Overhaul, Politics & Policy, The Workplace
The Trump Administration Is Leaving Federal Workers Vulnerable to Discrimination
Federal Overhaul is a multipart series that explores the impact of the Trump administration’s restructuring of the federal government on Black communities. “Overbearing.” “Intimidating.” “Aggressive.” Oscar Hampton, a Black former attorney at the U.S. Department of Labor, claimed in a federal district court complaint filed in 2023 that this was the language that white attorneys at […]