In late January 2023, car giant General Motors announced it would invest $650M in the mine project, giving GM exclusive access to the first phase of production.

Additionally, opponents of the mine have voiced concerns about rushed environmental review, threats to critical wildlife habitat, disruption of cultural sites.

Proponents of the mine have stated that the project is necessary to limit climate change by reducing carbon emissions from American cars, is benign in its social and environmental impact, and will create 300 long-term jobs in rural Nevada, paying an average of $63,000 per year.

[2][4] The New York Times reported that controversy around the mine is "emblematic of a fundamental tension" between green energy and damage caused by resource extraction required for those technologies.

[22] The Biden administration policy sees the United States securing a larger share of the lithium-battery supply chain through “safe, equitable and sustainable domestic mining ventures”.

[3] While the US holds some of the largest known reserves of lithium, the only large-scale US mine producing it (located in Silver Peak, Nevada) makes less than 5,000 tons annually, which is less than 2% of the global supply.

[13] Some opposition groups have expressed concern that a global rush for critical minerals like lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper could violate their basic rights and endanger their local ecologies and cultural heritage.

[31]: 1 [34]: 1 [35]: 1 Those interviews and Falk's July/August 2021 court filings,[32][36] detailed the butchery of the 'rotten moon' story, but didn't mention [32]: 1  who perpetrated the attack leading to speculation on the involvement of soldiers.

[33]: 1 A tribal elder, Alana Crutcher, refuted[35]: 1  the claim Peehee mu'huh was a name used for Thacker Pass and cast doubt on whether the massacre protestors described ever took place.

[35]: 3 In August 2021, Falk unearthed historical records of a cavalry attack in 1865 on Paiutes in the Quinn River Valley claiming it spilled over into Thacker Pass.

[44] The lithium mine is proposed to be a carbon-neutral operation, generating electric power from a sulfuric acid plant built on-site to leach lithium from the extracted ore.[45] The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the mine estimated Phase 2 emissions at an equivalent of 132,000 tons per year of CO2[46] with an additional 20,000 tons of emissions generated off-site by raw material transportation.

[50] The proposed transfer of water rights from Quinn River Valley crop irrigation to the mine site prompted a protest[51] from a local rancher who claimed the diversion was detrimental to the Bartell Ranch operation and against the public interest.

[45]: 1  The protest was overruled[52] on February 9, 2023, by the Nevada State Engineer, who developed an independent groundwater flow model to estimate the impacts of the mine on local water resources.

[64] On February 26, 2021, four environmental non-profits (Western Watersheds Project, Great Basin Resource Watch, Basin and Range Watch, and Wildlands Defense) also filed a lawsuit challenging the BLM's permitting of the project, claiming threats to sage grouse habitat, old growth sagebrush, golden eagle nests, endemic springsnails, and Endangered Species Act–listed Lahontan cutthroat trout, bighorn sheep, and pygmy rabbits.

"[29] When the BLM rejected this request for consultation, Reno Sparks Indian Colony, Burns Paiute Tribe, and a committee of Fort McDermitt Tribal members calling themselves People of Red Mountain intervened in the lawsuits.

In July, 2021 Chief United States District Judge Miranda Du ruled that Lithium America may excavate archaeological trenches at the site, as the environmental groups could not show irreparable harm would be caused by the digging.

[70] In September, Judge Du also ruled against tribes' claims that a historical massacre occurred in Thacker Pass and refused to grant their request for a preliminary injunction to stop excavation for cultural resources.

On December 17, 2021, a letter was delivered to the people of Red Mountain notifying the group that Falk and co-counsel Terry Lodge planned on filing a motion to withdraw as attorneys on January 7, 2022, citing irreconcilable differences.

[93] Judge Du ruled that the motion was untimely, prejudicial to other parties and that Winnemucca Indian Colony should have acted much sooner if they believed their interests might be adversely affected.

[97] On April 4, 2022, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Burns Paiute Tribe dropped their appeal to the United States Ninth Circuit for reconsideration of previous preliminary injunction requests.

The Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, are located 35 miles (56 km) north of Thacker Pass and the closest Native American community to the project.

[128] The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) found three occupied golden eagle territories overlapping the project area and a fourth closely adjoining it.

Two members of Deep Green Resistance (DGR), a radical environmental group, began occupying Thacker Pass on January 15, 2021,[131] the day the Record of Decision was issued for the proposed mine.

[132][133] Max Wilbert and attorney Will Falk set up the 'Protect Thacker Pass' camp, supported by DGR funding, to oppose construction of the lithium mine.

[137] In January 2022, Gary McKinney, a spokesperson for the People of Red Mountain, said they had recently removed their protest camp from Thacker Pass and split from joint opposition with Falk and Wilbert over concerns regarding their links to Deep Green Resistance.

[142] The New York Times reported that "the fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not be as green as they appear".

[2] In May, 2021, a group of Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone tribal members, calling themselves People of Red Mountain, petitioned the United States Department of the Interior and others to halt construction of the lithium mine at Thacker Pass.

[27][28] In an opinion piece in a local newspaper, Lithium Americas CEO Alexi Zawadzki criticized the protests and reassured concerns about environmental impact.

He argued that development of the Thacker Pass lithium deposit would support President Biden's economic security goals, provide jobs, and help the U.S. reach greenhouse gas emission targets.

[144] According to reporting in local news, Zawadzki and the company remained in active communication with the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone tribe, and several dozen tribal members had applied for jobs at the mine.