27 January 21
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27 January 21
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RSN: John Kiriakou | Pardon Me: What the Times Didn't Report
John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
Kiriakou writes: "You may have seen an article on the front page of The New York Times recently talking about how associates of President Trump are enriching themselves by selling 'consulting services' for those of us seeking presidential pardons."
ou may have seen an article on the front page of The New York Times recently talking about how associates of President Trump are enriching themselves by selling “consulting services” for those of us seeking presidential pardons. Attorneys who were close to Trump, former Trump campaign officials, and Republican lobbyists were charging tens of thousands of dollars and more to “present” a case to Trump and to ask for a pardon. It smelled like pay-for-play, and the system of simply going around the Office of the US Pardon Attorney was unprecedented. I was one of the people identified in the Times article as having hired a lobbyist.
In any normal administration, there is a hard-and-fast way for a person who has been convicted of a felony to apply for a presidential pardon. To be clear, a pardon is supposed to be “forgiveness” for a crime after a federal felon has served his time, completed any probation, and made good with his life. It doesn’t erase the crime – it just forgives it. What a convicted felon does is to fill out a form from the website of the Office of the US Pardon Attorney. That office refers the application to the FBI, which does an investigation to see if the felon has indeed repented and rebuilt his life, and then the Pardon Attorney makes a recommendation to the White House.
The problem is that the Pardon Attorney almost never recommends that a person be pardoned. This isn’t a partisan issue. At the end of the Clinton administration, donors to the Clinton Foundation, like international fugitive Marc Rich, whose ex-wife made a sizeable contribution, found that they were on the pardon list. There are really two tiers of justice and rehabilitation here. There are poor people, who go through the formal process and are almost always denied a pardon. And there are people with money and access, who use that money and access to the president to have attention paid to their requests. I went through the formal process in 2015. I filed the pardon application with the Office of the US Pardon Attorney and was ignored. I received a denial more than a year later.
So when Donald Trump was elected president, and it became clear that he was unlike any previous president, pardoning people only because Kanye West and Kim Kardashian asked him to, I decided to play the game as best I could. My strategy was multi-pronged. My attorney identified a lobbyist who had been Trump’s campaign manager in Florida in the 2016 race, and we arranged a meeting in the attorney’s office in Washington.
The meeting went well, or at least I thought it did. The lobbyist bragged about her close ties to Donald Trump. She showed me her cell phone, which had Trump’s cell phone number programmed in it and she said that the president routinely called her late in the night to discuss politics. She claimed closeness to Jared Kushner, Kellyanne Conway, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. We ended up coming to a deal. I would give her $50,000 (which I had to borrow) with a promise of another $50,000 when I got the pardon.
She went silent as soon as the check cleared. I would call for an update every few months, only to be told the same thing: The White House political director was aware of my case. Kellyanne was supportive. Don’t worry. The lobbyist was making inroads. It was all nonsense, of course. She didn’t have access to Trump, to Kushner, or to anybody else who mattered in the pardon process. I had to find another way to get to the president.
When Covid hit in February 2020, a wealthy friend of mine called to tell me that he had ordered 500 million KN95 masks from a manufacturer in China. He said he’d give me ten cents per mask for each one I helped him sell. We would sell them in lots of one million. Easy money, I thought. In June, he called to tell me that he was close to a deal at the Pentagon to sell 150 million masks, but the deal was stuck in procurement. He asked me if I knew Rudy Giuliani, whom he wanted to hire to get the Pentagon contract unstuck.
I didn’t know Giuliani, but I did know Bernie Kerik, the former New York Police Commissioner and Giuliani confidante who had served several years in prison for corruption. I got in touch with Kerik and he put me in touch with Giuliani’s “people.” We agreed to meet at the Trump International Hotel in Washington on July 1.
Giuliani and a business partner arrived at the Trump. I went with my friend and his business partner. The only item on the agenda was the masks. We asked Giuliani if he would go to the Pentagon with us to ask the Undersecretary of Defense to release the funds for the masks. Giuliani said that he wanted $1 million for the meeting, to which we agreed, and there was then a lull in the conversation.
I took advantage of that lull to ask Giuliani if he was willing to discuss my pardon application. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, he said, “I have to hit the head,” and he got up and went to the men’s room. His partner said, “Rudy doesn’t talk about pardons. You’ll have to talk to me. But Rudy’s going to want $2 million.” I laughed. “I don’t have $2 million. And even if I did, I wouldn’t spend it to recover a $700,000 pension.” That was the end of the conversation.
I’m telling you this story to illustrate how pardons were done during the Trump administration. If you wanted a pardon, you had to go directly to the president. Every other president used the formal pardon process. The problem with that is that the system simply didn’t and doesn’t work. Under Barack Obama, 3,395 people applied for a pardon, for example. Two hundred twelve were granted.
There is a relatively easy solution to this problem. First, there has to be a bipartisan consensus that people convicted of crimes can be rehabilitated. That’s an easy one. Second, there should be a consensus that people deserve to be rehabilitated. And as a practical matter, the Office of the US Pardon Attorney should be housed at the White House and not at the Justice Department. The Pardon Attorney should report directly to the White House Counsel and not to the Attorney General. There has to be independence from the prosecutors who have a vested interest in people not being pardoned.
Until then, the system will continue to encourage corruption and unethical behavior. It will encourage people of means to hire crooked lobbyists and attorneys who try to capitalize on their connections. It will continue to give an advantage in the pardon process to the wealthy. It’s time for the entire process to be restructured.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Democrats in Congress Are Preparing to Go Around Republicans to Pass Biden's Stimulus Package
Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider
Zeballos-Roig writes: "Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that Democrats may kick-start the reconciliation process next week as odds of any Republican support for President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion emergency spending package appeared very slim."
Using the maneuver would allow Democrats to pass the proposal unilaterally with only 51 votes and avoid the 60-vote supermajority required for most legislation. Schumer said Democratic senators could expect a floor vote on a budget resolution as early as next week — the first step to setting the procedure in motion.
"We want to work with our Republican colleagues to advance this legislation in a bipartisan way," the New York Democrat told reporters at a press conference. "But the work must move forward — preferably with our Republican colleagues but without them if we must. Time is of the essence."
Reconciliation would require every Democrat to get behind the Biden rescue plan, a possible hurdle given some moderate senators are reluctant to support every component of the proposal. The House must also pass a budget resolution, which lays out directions for relevant committees to begin drafting legislative text for the relief package.
Over the past week, Biden has attempted to secure 10 Republican votes for the plan. It includes $1,400 stimulus checks, federal unemployment benefits, aid to state and local governments, and a $15 federal minimum wage. A top economic advisor for the administration consulted with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Sunday.
But GOP resistance to the plan is intensifying, and many Republicans say the level of spending Biden is seeking isn't necessary to address the crisis. Instead, they favor a smaller rescue package that prioritizes measures like vaccine funds.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said during a floor speech on Monday that the Biden plan "misses the mark."
"Any further action should be smart and targeted, not just an imprecise deluge of borrowed money that would direct huge sums toward those who don't need it," the Kentucky Republican said.
Biden said Monday he was willing to negotiate for several more weeks in a bid toward the bipartisanship he campaigned on. He also expressed a willingness to modify the income thresholds for a third wave of stimulus checks — a key demand among some centrist Republicans.
But many Democrats say the crises call for swift action and spoke against drawn-out negotiations. Congressional leaders took about five months to negotiate a $900 billion relief package approved in December, a follow-up measure on a $2 trillion emergency spending bill enacted early last year.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said Democrats should spend a "very limited amount of time" trying to draw Republican votes. He referred to March 14 — the end date for many enhanced unemployment-insurance programs — as an apparent deadline for legislative action.
"We're facing a national emergency with COVID-19 and the economy," he told reporters on Capitol Hill. "We've got to move quickly. The president believes that this is a high priority and I agree."
That notion was echoed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He is set to oversee the reconciliation process in the Senate and has pressed for significant spending to combat the pandemic.
"I think there is a consensus. If Republicans are not prepared to come on board, that's fine. We're not going to wait," Sanders told reporters on Capitol Hill. "We're going forward soon and aggressively."
The Trump impeachment trial, which starts on February 8, threatens to upend the early Democratic governing agenda, since it may stretch on for several weeks. That's been a major factor pushing Democrats to immediately set the wheels in motion for passing Biden's rescue package.
McConnell and Schumer are also moving toward a power-sharing agreement to reorganize the Senate and allow Democrats to chair committees after a five-day standoff over the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold most bills need to clear the chamber.
A detention center. (photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP)
The Justice Department Has Rescinded Trump's "Zero Tolerance" Border Policy That Led to Family Separations
Adolfo Flores, BuzzFeed
Flores writes: "The Justice Department on Tuesday rescinded the Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' policy that led to the systematic separation of immigrant families at the border."
READ MORE
Voters wait in line to cast their ballots in Georgia's Senate runoff elections at a senior center Jan. 5 in Acworth, Georgia. (photo: Branden Camp/AP)
State Republicans Push New Voting Restrictions After Trump's Loss
Zach Montellaro, Politico
Montellaro writes: "Republican legislators across the country are preparing a slew of new voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump's defeat."
Georgia is at the center of the effort, with state Republicans discussing voter ID changes and other new policies after Biden won the state.
Georgia will be the focal point of the GOP push to change state election laws, after Democrats narrowly took both Senate seats there and President Joe Biden carried the state by an even smaller margin. But state Republicans in deep-red states and battlegrounds alike are citing Trump’s meritless claims of voter fraud in 2020 — and the declining trust in election integrity Trump helped drive — as an excuse to tighten access to the polls.
Some Republican officials have been blunt about their motivations: They don’t believe they can win unless the rules change. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning,” Alice O’Lenick, a Republican on the Gwinnett County, Ga., board of elections in suburban Atlanta, told the Gwinnett Daily Post last week. She has since resisted calls to resign.
The chair of the Texas Republican Party has called on the legislature there to make “election integrity” the top legislative priority in 2021, calling, among other things, for a reduction in the number of days of early voting. Jason Miller, a top Trump adviser, told the conservative site Just The News that Trump plans to remain involved in "voting integrity" efforts, keeping the issue at the top of Republicans' minds. And VoteRiders, a nonprofit group that helps prospective voters get an ID if they need one to cast a ballot, said it is expecting a serious push for new voter ID laws in at least five states, while North Carolina could potentially implement new voter ID policies that have been held up in court.
Voter ID laws are usually very popular among the general public — a 2018 Pew Research poll found that three-quarters of Americans surveyed supported laws requiring voters to present a photo ID — but activists say they are problematic for several disparate groups of voters.
“They are students and other young people, they’re communities of color, they’re older adults who are no longer driving, people with low income, people with disabilities,” said Kathleen Unger, the founder of VoteRiders. VoteRiders estimated that up to 25 million voting-age Americans lacked a government-issued photo ID.
Georgia Republicans, in particular, are intensely focused on their state’s election laws, after the state became the epicenter of Trump’s attempts to undermine confidence in the 2020 election results. Georgia Republicans have proposed a bevy of changes, from imposing limits on who can vote by mail to limiting the use of dropboxes, which allow people to return absentee ballots without using the postal system.
The Republican state Senate caucus has endorsed ending no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia, which was disproportionately used by Democratic voters in the 2020 elections. (More than one-third of Biden’s votes in Georgia were cast by mail, versus just 18 percent of Trump’s votes.) Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has rejected Trump’s fraud claims, also said he supported scrapping no-excuse mail voting because the system was too taxing on local election administrators.
However, the state’s GOP legislative leaders have yet to agree on exactly what to change. Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who is the president of the state Senate, told 11Alive News that he wouldn’t support ending no-excuse absentee voting, and state House Speaker David Ralston also sounded skeptical of ending the practice. Republicans are more universally aligned behind requiring absentee voters to submit a copy of an ID either when they request or return a ballot, which would replace the state’s signature verification system. Georgia already requires voters to show a photo ID when voting in person.
“I think that has the most likelihood of being signed into law,” said state Sen. Larry Walker, the vice chair of the Republican Senate caucus. Walker said he would be “very supportive” of that change and said his constituents were deeply concerned, saying he has gotten thousands of emails, letters and texts.
“A large percentage of my constituents have lost faith in the integrity of our election system,” he said. “So we're going to try to address some things that we feel like can restore the public's confidence in the system.”
He also rejected that claim that changes would disenfranchise voters, citing the state’s high turnout. “I don’t think any of these ideas are burdensome or overly restrictive or lead to what I would consider voter suppression,” he said.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan organization, 36 states have some form of voter ID law in place. The NCSL classifies Georgia as a “strict photo ID” state, meaning voters without approved ID must vote on a provisional ballot and take steps after the election to get their ballot counted.
But Georgia is unique among the closest 2020 battleground states in that Republicans control the governorship and both houses of the state legislature. That boxes out Democrats, who are broadly opposed to voter ID laws or other proposed electoral changes, like limiting absentee voting. Democratic governors in states with Republican legislatures, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, could veto changes to election laws if there isn’t bipartisan agreement on what to alter.
“Looking at the disposition of the governments in them, I’m not sure that really a lot of them are going to be able to go the distance the way that Georgia will,” said Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project, a conservative group. “But I think that there is certainly a lot of interest in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Wisconsin.”
In Pennsylvania, Republicans lawmakers have signaled their intent to introduce voter ID laws and try to repeal the state’s bipartisan law allowing no-excuse mail voting, though Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf stands in their way. The issue could percolate through the 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans will try to retake the governorship.
“It isn’t a secret that further election law changes must be made,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Seth Grove, a Republican who chairs the House State Government Committee, said at a hearing on the state’s election laws on Thursday afternoon, noting that both Democrats and Republicans have proposed changes to Pennsylvania election laws. Thursday’s hearing was the first of a planned 14 total hearings on election laws.
In Arizona, another swing state that Biden narrowly carried, Republicans in the state Senate have advanced legislation that would result in more automatic recounts. Some Republicans also introduced legislation to abolish the state’s permanent early voting list — which a supermajority of voters are registered for — although a cosponsor of the legislation told the Arizona Republic, “It can’t pass and I don’t want to waste my time with it.”
And in North Carolina, the state's delayed voter ID policy could go into effect before the 2022 midterm election. In 2018, voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring voter ID, but it was blocked by a federal judge from taking effect for the 2020 cycle. A federal appeals judge overturned a order effectively blocking its implementation, but there is an ongoing legal battle in both state and federal courts over the law.
“Election integrity, election security, these issues aren’t going anywhere,” Snead said. “And I firmly believe that if a legislature in a particular state does not pass a reform this cycle, it does not mean it’ll never pass a reform, right?”
FBI agents patrol near the site where two police officers were shot in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, on 23 September 2020. (photo: Jeff Dean/AFP/Getty Images)
Akin Olla | The FBI Can't Investigate White Extremism Until It First Investigates Itself
Akin Olla, Guardian UK
Olla writes: "The FBI has a long history of fulfilling the function of white supremacy in the United States."
Failing to hold the agency accountable will make a mockery of the Biden administration’s claims to combat the far right
ollowing the fascist riot at the US Capitol, the FBI appears to be finally taking action against white supremacists who have infiltrated police departments across the country. It is odd it took this long – while most news outlets are reporting that the FBI identified this threat almost 15 years ago, the FBI has been aware of white supremacist infiltration of police departments since at least 1961. It has also engaged in the work of white supremacy, spending the last century targeting Black leaders for surveillance. If the new Biden administration is to take seriously the threat of white supremacist infiltration of American institutions, the FBI needs to be held accountable for its past and present actions.
While the Tulsa Massacre was ongoing, the FBI’s predecessor was busy investigating Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. The FBI’s first director, J Edgar Hoover, waged war on the civil rights movement from its onset. The war was ramped up in the age of Cointelpro, an FBI program designed to surveil, dismantle and destroy any movement working to end racism or capitalist exploitation in the United States. The FBI occasionally investigated white supremacists during this era (1956 to 1971),but spent the vast majority of its resources fighting those committed to Black and Indigenous liberation. And many of the bureau’s investigations of white supremacists were disingenuous; the FBI knew for a fact that the Birmingham police Department had been infiltrated by the KKK, for example, but continued to feed the department information about civil rights activists. During Hoover’s half century as director, the FBI sent a blackmail letter to Martin Luther King encouraging him to commit suicide and was probably involved in the assassination of 21-year-old NAACP and Chicago Black Panther party leader Fred Hampton.
Towards the end of Hoover’s tenure, the FBI even went so far as to allegedly create and arm a far-right paramilitary organization in San Diego for the purpose of disrupting, attacking and potentially assassinating leftwing, particularly Chicano, leaders. On 6 January 1972, the FBI’s secret army attempted to murder Peter G Bohmer, a Marxist economics professor, and Paula Tharp, who had previously worked for an underground newspaper. The offices of that same newspaper had been previously raided twice by the FBI’s army. The army also bombed a movie theater and planned the assassination of leaders of the leftwing Chicano organization the Brown Berets, along with a second attempt on Peter Bohmer. No member of the FBI has been held accountable for these actions.
While the FBI likes to pretend that those were crimes of the past, there are more recent examples of white supremacist behavior in the organization. There is evidence that some FBI agents and other federal agents frequented an annual party called “The Good Ol’ Boys Roundup” from 1980 to 1996. The “Roundup” was known as a whites-only gathering that involved the selling of fake “N----r hunting licenses” and T-shirts with King’s face in a sniper’s crosshairs. While the Department of Justice insists that federal agents weren’t overwhelmingly engaged in racist behavior, their investigation of the Roundup was primarily conducted through interviews with participants of the event itself.
And it wasn’t just individual officers engaging in racist behavior. In the late 1990s the FBI launched an investigation of the Wu-Tang Clan, classifying it as a “major criminal organization”, with one agent comparing it to the Bloods. The FBI’s history of harassing and surveilling Black artists includes targeting Duke Ellington in 1938 and Gil Scott-Heron in the 1970s and 1980s. The FBI has long feared Black artists and their ability to reach the American public, which is why, in 1989, Milt Ahlerich, its assistant director of public affairs, sent a threatening letter to NWA’s record label in response to their evergreen classic Fuck tha Police.
The modern FBI has a problematic track record, too. In 2017 the bureau created a new counter-terrorism designation in response to the rise of Black Lives Matter and a new wave of the Black Liberation Movement. The new designation “Black Identity Extremists” has already been used to surveil and arrest at least one Black activist, Rakem Balogun, an open socialist and member of a number of leftwing Black power organizations. The FBI cited Balogun’s Facebook posts to justify raiding his home and arresting him; all the charges against him were unsubstantiated and later dropped. The designation has been criticized by many, including the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the nation’s largest organizations of Black police officers. And while Balogun was the first to be openly targeted, it is clear he is far from the only Black activist currently being surveilled.
All this is on top of the racist and Islamophobic targeting of the US Muslim population. Since 9/11, the FBI has placed spies in mosques across the country and surveilled Muslim Americans for crimes as simple as researching video games and ordering computers from Best Buy. The surveillance did not cease in our arguably “Post-Post-9/11” world; the FBI visited at least a hundred Muslims in the United States in the run-up to the 2016 election. At a time in which hate crimes against Muslims were increasing, the FBI spent valuable resources doubling down on racial profiling.
The internal culture and individual behaviors of FBI agents are also of concern. In 1991, a group of Black agents filed a class action lawsuit against the bureau, claiming a history of racial discrimination. Despite the agents winning the lawsuit, the FBI made no attempt to alter its culture. Just a few months ago, a group of Black former FBI agents had to form an organization just to argue for more racial diversity in the bureau, especially at the highest ranks, which have remained nearly exclusively white for the entirety of its 100 years in existence. While representation won’t even begin to address the FBI’s racism, it is telling that Black agents represent an even smaller percentage of the FBI than they did in the midst of the early 1990s lawsuit.
The FBI has made some effort to reform itself over the years, but those attempts were undone in the aftermath of 9/11 and the rise of the new surveillance state. In 2011 the FBI decentralized its operations, giving individual agents more autonomy to conduct low-level searches and investigations with no paper trail. Given the racist culture within the organization, and the new designation created specifically for Black activists, there is reason to be concerned about the bureau’s future.
Given the FBI’s long history of upholding white supremacy, it is clearly ill-equipped to investigate white supremacist infiltration of other organizations. The FBI, like our country’s military and police departments, needs to be thoroughly investigated and its racist practices, past and present, brought to light. Failing to hold the agency accountable will prove the current administration’s claims of combating extremism a farce.
Protesters demand resignation of President Jovenel Moise, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 20, 2021. (photo: EFE)
Haiti: President Moise Deploys Police to Halt Rising Protests
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Haiti's president Jovenel Moise on Monday ordered to increase the police deployment in the streets of Port-au-Prince due to the wave of protests that will be called on February 7."
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Thousands of school students and protesters march during a climate strike rally in Sydney, Australia, 2019. (photo: Jenny Evans/Getty Images)
Public Backs Climate Change Action Across the Globe, Massive UN Poll Finds
Adela Suliman, NBC News
Suliman writes: "The biggest global survey of its kind has found that almost two thirds of people believe climate change remains a global emergency, despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic."
Covering 50 countries, the U.N. survey found most people support renewable energy, forest protection and electric vehicles.
The Peoples' Climate Vote, published Wednesday, conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the University of Oxford, surveyed 1.2 million people across 50 countries.
In total, 64 percent of respondents agreed that climate change represented a pressing emergency. The survey also found a distinct age divide, with the majority of young people more concerned about climate change.
"The results of the survey clearly illustrate that urgent climate action has broad support amongst people around the globe," UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner, said in a statement.
"But more than that, the poll reveals how people want their policymakers to tackle the crisis," he said.
By taking an unconventional approach and reaching out via mobile gaming websites and apps, the survey found 70 percent of young people called climate change a global emergency compared to 58 percent of adults aged over 60.
Since 2018, millions of students from New Zealand to New York have been striking and demonstrating to demand global action on climate change.
The Fridays for Future movement, which began as a lone demonstration by Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, quickly mushroomed, with millions of students taking to the streets to push climate change to the top of the agenda of world leaders.
In many participating countries, the survey was the first large-scale opinion poll ever conducted on the issue.
In Britain, making companies pay for pollution had high support while the majority of those asked in the United States backed renewable energy sources.
Investing in green jobs and more climate-friendly farming techniques were popular in Indonesia and Egypt, the survey found, but fewer people overall elsewhere supported plant-based diets.
"The Peoples' Climate Vote has delivered a treasure trove of data on public opinion that we've never seen before," said Professor Stephen Fisher from the University of Oxford. "Recognition of the climate emergency is much more widespread than previously thought."
On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned leaders that the world was not only facing a Covid-19 emergency but also "existential threats" to climate and biodiversity.
In a speech to the World Economic Forum's virtual Davos Agenda meeting, he said one crisis could inform the other, urging Covid-19 recovery plans to also help "end our war against nature, avert climate catastrophe and restore our planet."
In the U.S. — the world's second largest carbon emitter after China — hours after President Joe Biden was sworn into office, America rejoined the global climate pact signed in Paris in 2015. Biden also cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline permit, symbolizing a shift away from fossil fuels.
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