[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: And I'm your other co host, Jaron. And.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And today we're building on our previous episode where we spoke with our state legislative manager, Brianna, about some of the items on WEAC's policy agenda. Since we covered what was going on at the state level, we thought it was only fair to talk about what's going on at the federal level.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Yeah. And our guest today is Weezy Foster, who is the government affairs manager for our Federal Policy Office.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: But before we get into our interview with Weezy Jaron, can you share WEAC's mission?
[00:00:48] Speaker C: I sure can. WEAC's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Thank you. So we know there's a lot going on in the realm of federal politics and policies, to say the least, right, Jaron?
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So it can seem like climate and environmental justice can get lost in all the noise. But rest assured, our Federal Policy Office is on top of it, especially with an administration that's a little more hostile to climate and environmental issues compared to the previous administration.
But we do want you to know that the movement does continue and it lives on.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Yeah. So we're trying to capture a little bit of that hopeful note in this episode despite. Despite many of the feelings about how things are going at the federal level. But with that, I also want to acknowledge, or I also want to encourage folks to actually check out one of our previous episodes from last December where we talked with Leslie Fields, we ACT's chief federal officer, about her role in creating our Federal Policy Office in the first place. It's a. It's a great episode. It's one of our holiday specials. It's a nice storytelling, fun episode. So if you haven't listened to it, I encourage you to check it out and we'll include a link in the show notes if you want to give it a listen.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Weezy to hear more about what is on the federal policy agenda and what else they have going on at the Federal Policy Office.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: Let's go.
All right, well, thank you so much for joining us, Wheezy. I think this is our first time having you on the podcast, so welcome for all of our listeners. If you don't mind just briefly introducing yourself and just tell us A little bit about your role at weact.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So happy to be here. I've actually been a fan of the POD since before I joined WE act. So this is fun.
I had it in my, my queue. You all were in my earbuds before we met. So there you go.
Yeah. So, okay. So I'm Wesley Foster. I'm the Government Affairs Manager at WE act for Environmental justice. And I am in the Federal Policy Office, which based in D.C.
we have had a federal policy office in D.C. since I believe, 2014 or thereabouts, to elevate environmental justice priorities on the national stage. So we have a team that does congressional affairs. That's the team that I work on for the most part.
We've got a federal research team, a communications manager in the D.C. office.
Then we have a team that focuses on administration policy, our federal policy team. So we have a small but mighty contingent in D.C. and I don't know that everyone who knows we act well in New York knows that.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Cool. So I'm going to kick it off A lot of things that are when people thinking about what's going on federally right now, when it comes to Congress and the administration, there's a lot going on, to say the absolute least. And so I think it's always interesting for people to understand what a little bit of like, what goes on in the environmental justice world right now, given the time that we are. That we're in with the federal administration not being as favorable, let's just say, to some of the causes that we try to champion. And one of the bigger pieces of legislation that is really important to not just weac, but at the entire environmental justice movement is the National Environmental Policy act, or nepa. That's a really important piece of legislation that is kind of more or less, I would say, considered under attack right now with this federal administration. So can you tell us a little bit about the National Environmental Policy act and what is it supposed to do?
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad that we're starting with that because it's so important.
I think if we could sort of first zoom out and think about like, and talk a little bit about the bigger picture of like, what permitting means in environmental justice work, because I think it's like so important to understand why and how it's sort of part and parcel to what we're doing. And I think Peggy does a really good job of highlighting this. She has a great TED Talk that you can check out where she sort of, she sort of elevates the specific emphasis that permitting has within the environmental justice movement because it's a permitting process that gives polluters the permission to pollute our soil, our water, our air, and it gives them the permission to be cited in a specific location. And as we, as we know well, communities of color and low income are where this permission is most loose and has sort of made them into sacrifice zones.
So permitting is the mechanism that determines if a community will have one polluting facility or two polluting facilities, or 10 or 15 polluting facilities.
And more often than not, there are multiple polluting facilities cited in one place. So it's core in many ways to what we're doing sort of in general here with environmental justice. And as Peggy says so well and better than I do in a lot of her talks that she gives. Permitting is really critical to the definition of environmental justice, but it happens at every level of government. So a lot of the times it's city and state that have a big role in the zoning decisions and the siting decisions that are being made. But the federal government plays a really big role. And that's where the National Environmental Policy act, or nepa, comes into play. So it's been around for a while. It was signed into law in 1970 by President Nixon, and it was one of the first major environmental laws. It required for the first time federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of proposed action.
It's often referred to as one of our bedrock environmental laws. And it came about around the same time as what we consider sort of like the first time that the federal government started thinking about environmental policy and a regulatory framework. So Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species act, all sort of came within this maybe five year period in the early 1970s.
And NEPA was important because it was the first time it forced the federal government to bring an environmental consideration into the mainstream of their decision making. And it also established established Council of Environmental Quality at the White House to sort of oversee this work. And that is a permanent, permanent office in the White House doesn't come and go with administrations. So it's been a really important law generally for our framework for environmental policy in this country. But specifically, NEPA requires the federal government to assess the environmental impacts of a major proposed action or decision, typically through what's called an environmental impact statement or environmental assessment. And the purpose of the law is it's twofold. One is to ensure that the government does its due diligence in determining the full extent of any potential impacts that a proposed project might have on the environment and the surrounding communities.
And secondly, it makes sure that the communities are aware of any potential input impacts that they'll experience and have a voice in how and whether they are implemented.
So at the time, NEPA represented a great step forward for the environment and was the result of a lot of work that had been done for many, many years by environmental justice leaders up until then.
And it's also incredibly important tool for environmental justice communities because it helps them be informed about the decisions that will impact them and their health and their children's health, and then it provides a venue for them to participate in the decision making process.
So at its core, NEPA is really a democratic tool. It's a tool that allows people to have a say in the decisions that their government is making, what's happening with their taxpayer dollars, especially if it impacts their community and their health.
And when it was passed, it was very bipartisan, it was popular, it was sort of a different era at the time.
And in the years since, we've seen it really come under attack both in the judicial arena, in the regulatory arena and in Congress. And right now we're seeing some of the worst attacks in the statute in recent years.
So it has taken, taken a lot of sort of our focus in the past few years in the Federal Policy Office. So it's one of these issues that up over and over again, it's sort of evergreen fight.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Thanks for some of that background and I appreciate you kind of starting the conversation with kind of just brief overview about permitting, why it's important, and just kind of some of that context setting because again, not all of us work in this space or are in this space all the time. So, you know, it's helpful for folks that are maybe less knowledgeable about the permitting process and what that actually means and how that impacts them to get that context. So you actually did a great job of setting me up for my next question too. Just thinking about what some of the current challenges are with what's going on with NEPA and other kind of policies at the federal level. And so I just wanted to dive into that a little bit more. I know that as you mentioned, there's this effort at the federal level to do what they're calling permitting reform.
Quotes around that. And you know, I'm just kind of curious to hear from your perspective, what does that look like and how is it actually impacting things like NEPA and other policies at the federal level?
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I appreciate the quotes in this political context, so. Yeah, yeah. Permitting reform under this administration and having majority, majority Republican Senate and majority Republican House of Representatives and how it's been presented in legislation in this Congress is what we would consider far beyond form.
We're seeing this as an attempt to radically roll back the core functions of NEPA and cut communities out of that process.
So reform is sort of the go to term that people have been using to talk about efforts to make changes to the NEPA process for many years. But again, sort of have to keep in mind political that proponents of permitting reform would like to see changes to NEPA is that they blame NEPA for delays and build out of energy projects, of transportation projects like big highway projects, transmission lines, updates to the grid.
And proponents claim that loosening the requirements for NEPA reviews would accelerate and streamline the build out of energy projects. Specifically.
This is sort of the contours of the conversation that are happening right now in Congress.
So there's a lot of energy on the Republican side of the aisle to deregulate NEPA to build these projects faster. There's also interest from folks who would like to see renewable energy built out quickly.
So you'll often see some Democrats supportive of permitting reform. It doesn't always look the same, but what we know and what we're trying to do to sort of educate Congress on this issue is that deregulation of our bedrock environmental statutes and cutting out communities is not the solution for building renewable energy at a speed to meet the climate crisis. That is sort of one of the major myths that we're trying to fight against right now. We have a lot of data and a lot of research that community input is critical. And there are other ways that we can support a thorough process that brings communities in, makes the process participatory, and protects the community input, like increases to staffing and staffing budgets.
So there is substantial movement in the House of Representatives and to a certain extent in the Senate to see permitting reform done.
We act in many environmental justice groups that we work with who are doing national advocacy as well, as well as most of the major environmental. National environmental groups who do broad environmental work are vehemently opposed to any changes to NEPA under this administration and this Congress.
We know that there are ways to support thorough and comprehensive agency reviews like staffing.
One thing that will slow permitting down substantially for sure is firing all of the staff that do that do permitting reviews. So we'd like to see fully funded staffs that are doing this work, that have the expertise to do this work. And there are many, many other sort of positive improvements that we act and many other groups have identified that can support a positive permitting process. But that does not include changes to NEPA that undermine science, that undermine community participation and sort of elevate the private industry above the people. So that's, that's a lot of the work that we're doing right now is to dispel some of these myths about nepa. We have a great report at AJ on our government affairs team and our fantastic research team in the Federal Policy Office put together called NEPA does not delay and it sort of lays out the issue, does a literature review, does some myth busting and then give specific examples of where community input has really improved the process and resulted in projects that the community is happy with and that were able to be completed in a reasonable timeframe. And we're talking specifically transmission lines, transit projects, et cetera. But there are a whole bunch of resources that we have in the Federal Policy office if folks are interested in taking a sort of deeper dive on environmental justice perspectives on permitting reform.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah, we're definitely going to link any of those resources in our, in our show notes as well so people can take a look a little bit deeper. I appreciate you kind of explaining and walking through kind of how the permitting kind of reform and what that looks like and that it's multi layered and it's not just goes, it goes beyond just changing a piece of legislation. There's other ways to attack it. Not staffing people properly or putting people in places that are antagonistic to our goals. So I really appreciate that kind of like layered approach to understanding what's at stake here when it comes to NEPA and how folks are possibly attacking it. And one of the things that you definitely mentioned that I thought was interesting that I also forget about is that there are definitely legislators or people who think that these things can be positive for like you mentioned the build out of renewable energy and can kind of go with that framework. And we have to make sure we're dispelling the myths as you are doing and your team is doing. And so I think that kind of leads into my next question thinking about midterm elections and new people coming in in Congress possibly and how there's a generational divide where you've got millennials who are coming more to political power and same with some Gen Z across the nation. And it's really important. Environmental and climate issues are very important and environmental justice is also spoken about often within that kind of that generation. So what is a new generation of legislators at the national level who are, who are environmental justice champions in Congress, what does that look like? And how are you working and your team working to kind of cultivate those relationships and those champions?
[00:17:19] Speaker A: I love this question because it's like a hopeful question and we need reasons to feel hope. So.
Yeah. So I will first say we also have great allies in Congress right now. There is a great group of champions who have centered environmental justice work for many, many years in both the House and the Senate. And we really appreciate those relationships that are based on trust and listening and really sort of understanding what folks on the front line are experiencing and trying to translate that into positive policy. But we've also lost a lot of champions in the past couple years and some real sort of living legends that, that we were able to work with for the past few decades.
When I say we, you know, we act in the environmental justice movement. Representatives Grijalva and McEachin were enormous leaders for environmental justice in Congress just as the movement sort of began to gain traction at the national level.
And they really played a key role in elevating the issues for Congress and making environmental justice a term that most people on the Hill know and they understand what that means.
It was difficult for the movement to lose those folks. But we've got new champs coming in as well. We've got Representative Lee is taking on the lead of the Environmental justice for All Act. Rep. Rivas from California ran on a platform form of Environmental Justice, Representative McClellan Tlaib.
And we also have, of course, Representative Grijalva's daughter who has, has taken on leadership in his district and will be a very solid environmental justice champion for us. We also love to see our House champions move on to the Senate. So Senator Blunt Rochester has been a huge advocate for water issues and other environmental justice issues and is now representing Delaware in the Senate. So we're also seeing this, you know, we see races across the country. We're seeing environmental justice come up as an issue that voters actually care, you know, care a lot about. And we're seeing or more candidates run on a specifically environmental justice platform, which is something that we haven't always seen in the past, but we're also doing a lot of educating and re educating of existing members.
It's been a hard year for environmental justice. And our job is to remind folks that we're all still here, that we're still up on the Hill advocating for policies, even though it's a very difficult time to be successful.
And we're trying to sort of explain, you know, what does environmental justice look like in your district?
How does it show up in your district or your state, what does it mean for your constituents? And, and it's different, of course. And you know, in, across the country there are different issues, but it's very much a rebuilding time for us. And I think that there's a lot of great work that can be done while we're trying to regain majority and hopefully see more friendly administration come in. And we want to be able to hit the ground running with a platform with some solid allies that have a very clear understanding of what it means to be championing environmental justice on the Hill.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: I appreciate your insights there and kind of giving us a sense of how that relationship building is working. And you know, like you said, a nice little sprinkle of a hopeful note in this, in this conversation. People probably weren't expecting us to have a hopeful note in here is all going to be gloom and doom. But I gotcha. We, we can be positive and still talk about federal policy.
But, you know, the spirit of this episode was to also get into some of the items that are kind of on our federal policy agenda. So, you know, kind of building off of what you just mentioned in terms of platform and what people are actually working on. You know, some of the folks that have been long term EJ champions, but also, you know, some newer faces. Can you just briefly share, you know, two or three of some of the top priorities in terms of legislation for this year? I know there's, there's a lot going on. Like you said, there's lots of moving pieces, but just kind of at a high level, just some things that are on your radar that you're thinking about that folks might want to pay attention to.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Okay, so I'll have to start for EJ for all, Environmental justice for all, which many of the listeners may know very well.
But this is sort of our, this is our marquee environmental justice legislation. And it's been introduced for a few Congresses now and began with ranking member Grijalva, when he was the chair of the House Natural Resources committee, and Representative McEachin, who I mentioned earlier. But they really sort of engaged communities at a unseen level of, like, comprehension. Like, they took the bill on tour, they solicited community feedback from over 300 environmental justice groups to make a piece of legislation that represented environmental justice communities across the country. And community input is sort of like the, as you know, sort of bedrock principle for environmental justice. So having comprehensive community input and having a piece of legislation that has the stamp of approval was really important. It's called the Environmental justice for All Act. And I can, you know, I can go through all of the titles or maybe we can link it, but it was on the Senate side led by Senator Tammy Jackworth and Cory Booker, and Senator Markey is also included in that Senate EJ Caucus as well and have been great champs, so have to shout them out.
But we're seeing this legislation sort of also in a rebuilding period. We would like for it to be a high priority for when we retake the House as Democrats and try to get as many Democrats as possible signed on to that piece of legislation and understanding the importance of environmental justice as a real policy priority for the party.
So that's one that we were always working on and we're working on now, and I'm excited to see that sort of move forward in the next year.
Data centers have also become an enormous environmental justice issue in the past year or two.
We've been hearing a lot from our Environmental Justice Leadership Forum, which is a group of, I think over 40 now, groups from across the country that we act facilitates and sort of acts as a convener for and for our part on the Government affairs team. We try to support their advocacy in Congress, connecting them with their representatives, making sure they're aware of new developments like nepa, with nepa, like with the Toxic Substances Control act, and just sort of acting as a conduit for them because we have the team and the capacity to do so. So data centers have been something that's come up over and over again as an issue of concern.
So we've seen Congress sort of slow to address this issue.
Affordability, we're seeing as a big midterm election theme for Democrats. And because data centers have contributed to higher energy bills, we're seeing that sort of convene and converge as a platform for talking about these issues in the next year.
Senator Sanders called for a moratorium on all new data centers late last year, and we saw Senator Van Hollen introduce the Power to the People act, which is one of the biggest pieces of legislation that we've seen to address the high cost of energy from data centers and the impact impacts of pollution on communities. So we're staying, staying super engaged on this issue, and it'll likely be a big priority for us in 2026.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: Thank you for that. And I'm happy to see the Environmental justice for All Act.
On my one trip to D.C. to do some advocacy, that was one of the bills that I actually got to talk to Representative McEachin in his office. And yeah, had the Opportunity to get more knowledgeable about what was going on with that act. It was kind of funny to be there and be like, yeah, so you're already doing the thing, so thanks for your support. I was there with Peggy. It was just a very fun conversation.
Of all the conversations I had that on that trip, it was just super laid back. He's like, yeah, welcome. Yeah, we're doing the work.
Let us know if there's other things that we can do.
But glad to see that. I mean, it's bittersweet, you know, that we're still pushing for it. You know that it hasn't passed yet. There's that. But also that it. That is still a priority that we're still pushing. It is exciting to see.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: One thing that I've just noticed as beginning a lot of this work is what's so neat about working at WE act is that you get to meet so many legends in the environmental justice movement. Charles Lee will join us for advocacy that Dr. Bullard is speaking at a conference. It's really like, it's amazing to be able to see the folks really instrumental in the movement and see their work sort of up close and connect with them.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's. I mean, it's important. It is kind of crazy to read about the people that you read about or that you've. That you've seen in articles and you hear as legends in these movement and you're actually like in a room with them and you're helping. You're. You're working alongside them. So it's always great to hear that, you know, these efforts are still going on despite that there's opposition and that there are still champions within Congress to do that, do that work. And so I guess one thing that we don't talk a lot about in the policy world, at least I don't feel like we talk about enough, is we talk about a lot of things that we are championing and that we are moving forward and that we want people to be on board with. We don't talk a lot about some of the things that we oppose in terms of legislation or things that come our way or lands on our desk and says, oh, no, we actually need to do something vocal and oppose this particular thing because it is a harmful or it is a bad thing or it is antithetical to what we're trying to do. Can you talk about maybe one or two things that are like that in the federal policy world that we actually have to oppose vocally?
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, playing defense is not as fun as playing offense.
But I feel like sometimes I hear the New York office report is like, we got this done and this done and this done. And like, oh, man, I'm so jealous. Like, we're trying to get this one thing not done, you know, in D.C.
but yeah. So we talked about permitting, and the big, big piece of legislation that we were focused on last fall was the Speed act, which passed, ended up passing the House of Representatives. But the sort of victory was that there were less Democrats that voted for it than maybe initially before the environmental groups started doing their advocacy work. So tbd, sort of where that bill will go, the Senate would have to act on it. And I'm not sure exactly what that looks like right now, but that's certainly something we'll continue to keep track of as the year progresses. There's actually a big hearing next week in the Senate about permitting reform. So we can sort of take the temperature of how the conversations are going on the Senate side based on that and move from there. But one thing that we certainly are tracking also on the House side is again, reform to the Toxic Substances Control act, or tsca.
And TSCA is a bill also, you know, one of those 1970s bedrock environmental laws that provides EPA with the authority to require testing, reporting, and certain restrictions on chemical substances.
So some that are excluded, that I know you might be thinking of already, are cosmetics.
Cosmetics are not included under tsca. They're regulated separately, pesticides, food and drugs. So when you're thinking about tsca, you're thinking about household cleaning products, you're thinking about furniture, you're thinking about manufacturing products, products that are used in construction material.
And TSCA had, TSCA was, you know, it was a big deal, but it had a lot of weaknesses, some of which were addressed in a major update to the bill in 2016.
And we act was very involved in that conversation.
Cecil Corbin Mark was a big leader for environmental justice, voices within that advocacy conversation back then, and they made so much needed updates to the bill.
But many would argue that it didn't go as far as it could have and that the framework in general for how we regulate chemicals in the US Is lacking, we'll say.
But the House of Representatives last week, the committee that has jurisdiction over Tosca, released a draft bill text for an update to tsca.
It is terrible, a terrible, a terrible bill for many, many reasons. But essentially, at its core, it makes it easier for chemical companies to get their chemicals reviewed into market, meaning much less stringent process for the chemicals that do need to be reviewed under the bill or under the law currently.
So that's something that we are keeping a very, very close eye on.
That's, that's going to be a big priority for us in 2026 as well.
[00:32:12] Speaker C: Thank you. And we don't need to go too down the rabbit hole of how whacked, how messed up our management and systems for controlling toxic substances in the US and the split. Yeah, we are well aware we've gone down that rabbit hole. We'll drop a link in the show notes for anyone who wants to go down that rabbit hole. I think the best episode that we talk about it is one of our first episodes with U of Osper talking about toxic chemicals and products and all that. So it's crazy, honestly. But I appreciate you kind of shedding some light on what the status of that bill, specifically trying to weaken TOSCA and what y' all are doing around that domain. But, but as we get near the end of our conversation, we've had a lot of highlights of things that are on our policy agenda, but I know there's lots of other things that y' all are doing at the Federal Policy Office. You alluded to a lot of those things, a lot of the great work that the research team does and other folks. So before we wrap up, I just wanted to give you a chance to just share anything else quickly that you want to highlight for our listeners about the work that y' all are doing at the Federal Policy Office and anything that maybe isn't quite in the policy agenda but is important work that y' all are doing. Because I know there's a lot or just anything else that's on the top of your mind.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Okay.
Okay. Yeah. So I will, I'll just highlight that our federal research team has incredible work products in the form of story maps, which have been a really invaluable tool both for educating the broader environmental community, the environmental justice community, and the advocacy community on the environmental justice perspective.
So they produced six story maps over the course of the year and they also did a lot of incredible polling with other partners, Data for Progress, the Environmental Polling Consortium, and the Yale Program for Climate Change Communications and Climate Advocacy.
And this, this polling is super helpful in pushing back against the idea that voters don't value environmental justice policies as much as they do other policies. It's been really helpful for us to understand public sentiment on data centers and it's really important for us to have our own research team and able to rely on our own research and director and research. So they've been doing incredible work there. They also do a lot of work to educate the academic community on environmental justice issues, taking folks from the American Geophysical Union down for a toxics tour in Louisiana with community groups and other partners, and then just publishing a lot of incredible work that they've been doing in academic journals. Also, our Federal affairs, or excuse me, Federal Policy Team has been very, very diligently tracking and responding to all of the rollbacks that the Trump administration has promulgated in the past year. I think the list is 30 regulations that they've been tracking and making sure that we're responding to properly and with our partners in order to combat that combat and slow down that deregulatory agenda. I think that's that's sort of a good summary of what we've been up to.
[00:35:34] Speaker C: Great. Well, thank you for, thank you for that recap, that brief overview, but also just for kind of shedding some light on all the different policies and all the work that you all are doing at the federal office, and hopefully we'll have you back on the show again. We have lots of these items on the federal policy agenda that could use a whole episode in and of themselves. So maybe we'll have you back, have some other folks from the federal office join as well and have a conversation about some of those items and to see what happens over the next couple months with those. But thank you again for making time to be on the podcast and for making your debut. We're glad that we got you on to talk about these items. And yeah, thanks to our listeners for tuning in.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Thanks Weezy.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: Thank you all.
Ya.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Thank you for listening. If you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts about the show or suggestions for topics you want us to discuss, we encourage you to reach out to
[email protected] and check out React.
[00:36:38] Speaker C: On Facebook at react4ej. That's W E a C T F O R E j on Instagram, bluesky and youtubeact4ej. That's W E A C T number 4ej and check out our website react.org for more information about environmental justice.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Until next time.
[00:36:59] Speaker C: Bye.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: It.
