Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Representative (R-82) Chris Hurt to the newsmakers line to discuss the success of the Ford Megasite deal while working through session.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio for another edition of Crom’s Commentary.
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According to Russia’s Interfax news agency, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently announced, “Just like the overwhelming majority of other countries, Russia views Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China. This is the premise we proceed from and will continue to proceed from in our policy.” At the time of this statement, Russian forces were conducting joint naval exercises with Chinese forces in the Pacific—culminating in a 10-ship joint formation sailing through Japan’s Tsugaru Strait on October 18.
This, following a series of unprecedented Chinese military aircraft incursions into Taiwan’s airspace, has rattled Taiwan and America’s other allies in the region, namely Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia. During the first week of October, over 150 aircraft, including advanced SU-30 fighters and H-6 heavy bombers, flew into Taiwanese airspace. An unprecedented 56 tactical aircraft penetrated Taiwan’s airspace in a single 24-hour period on October 4, the highest single day total to date.
China has already taken control of multiple islands claimed by these allies in an effort to access vast oil and natural gas resources, as well as project its military power in the contested territorial waters of the South China Sea. China’s ongoing trade dispute with Australia has also ratcheted up tensions in the region.
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The share price of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the company launching former President Donald Trump’s new social media and entertainment venture, rose nearly 190% following Trump’s announcement of his plans to develop the tech platform.
The company, listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange as DWAC, is a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that acts as a public shell corporation to acquire private companies and list them publicly on a stock exchange. The company entered into a merger agreement with Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) in order to raise public funding for Trump’s social media venture, according to a press release.
Trump announced Wednesday that he was launching a new social media platform called TRUTH Social intended to “fight back” against major tech companies that banned the former president earlier this year. The new venture will also include on-demand video entertainment and news services.
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Thousands of Afghan refugees who were temporarily housed at U.S. military bases are resettling in communities around the country every week, CBS News reported on Thursday.
Around 6,000 Afghan refugees who were evacuated from the Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power have resettled around the U.S., according to data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CBS News reported. Additionally, about 3,000 new residents with U.S. citizenship, green cards and those with close family or friends in the U.S. have left the military bases.
More than 55,000 Afghan evacuees are still at the temporary housing sites across eight military bases in the U.S. and another 5,000 refugees remain waiting in third countries to come to the U.S., according to CBS News. Around 4,000 evacuees were released to resettle in the U.S. in the last week.
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Southwest Airlines announced Thursday that it would adjust its December flight schedule to adjust for ongoing labor shortages.
Southwest canceled over 2,000 flights on Oct. 10 and 11, costing the company over $75 million, according to Southwest’s Q3 earnings report. The airline attributed the canceled flights to weather and air traffic control issues but later admitted to experiencing a labor shortage, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The airline expects to cut its Q4 flight schedule by 8% from 2019, compared to a 5% reduction the company initially planned for, according to the WSJ. The company also expects a decline in staffing compared to its historical average, according to its Q3 earnings report.
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The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board said that a Democratic effort to crack down on tax cheating would give the Treasury Department access to almost every American’s bank account.
The Thursday op-ed focused on a proposal that would require financial institutions to report individual accounts containing at least $10,000 to the IRS. That effort, the board wrote, would affect the vast majority of Americans who did not exclusively use cash to make purchases and pay bills.
“The details are murky, but most Americans could still get ensnared in this dragnet unless they pay bills and buy goods in cash,” the editorial board wrote. “Democrats say banks will only have to report total annual inflows and outflows, not discrete transactions. But nearly all Americans spend more than $10,000 a year.”
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The National Institutes of Health reiterated its stance Thursday that it did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, despite having released documents on Wednesday showing that it funded the creation of a lab-made SARS coronavirus that was more deadly and pathogenetic towards mice with humanized cells.
EcoHealth Alliance informed the NIH in August that its lab-created rWIV1-SHC014 S coronavirus killed 75% of mice with humanized cells, while the natural WIV1 virus it was based on killed less than 25% of mice with the same humanized cells. The experiments were conducted with the Wuhan Institute of Virology between June 2018 and May 2019.
“These results suggest that the pathogenicity of SHC014 is higher than other tested bat SARSr-CoVs in transgenic mice that express hACE2,” EcoHealth Alliance told the NIH in its progress report.
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The majority of Americans oppose the Biden administration’s plans to monitor and investigate outspoken parents at school boards meetings, new polling from Convention of States Action reveals.
The poll found 57% of those surveyed do not support the announcement while 19.8% are in favor. The rest are not sure.
“…One can plainly see that those who are aware that Merrick Garland made this announcement oppose him by large majorities, while there’s a group who marked ‘not sure’ because they don’t know about his announcement or don’t know enough about it,” said Mark Meckler, president of Convention of States Action.
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Available warehouse space near significant distribution hubs fell to historic lows in the third quarter of 2021, placing even more pressure on supply chain bottlenecks and increasing inflation, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Demand for industrial real estate in the third quarter outpaced supply by 41 million square feet, increasing the vacancy rate to 3.6%, down 0.7% from Q3 2020 and marking the lowest level since 2002, according to data from CBRE, the WSJ reported.
Warehouses near the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports in California, some of the most important distribution points of entry in the country, reached a vacancy rate of 1% in Q3 this year, according to the WSJ. During the same quarter in 2020, the vacancy rate was 2.3%.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to outline Dr. Fauci’s lies to Congress and Merrick Garland’s dismissal of memo referencing parents as domestic terrorists.
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The latest version of Wisconsin’s new political map will not become law if Gov. Tony Evers has anything to do with it.
The governor on Thursday told Republican lawmakers that he will not sign the map they unveiled on Wednesday.
“If Republicans want to get serious about passing maps I can sign, they need to do a heck of a lot more listening to the people of this state,” Evers said in a statement.
The governor claims the Republican-drawn map is “gerrymandered,” but didn’t offer any specific suggestions of the changes he’d like to see.
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A well-funded black power group will use strippers and party buses to entice people to vote for a measure to amend the Minneapolis City Charter to “remove” the police department later this month.
The Black Visions Collective is a Minnesota-based organization that promotes “black power” and advocates for total abolition of the police. It has also raised $30 million since the George Floyd riots last summer and is using some of this money to run shuttles from a strip club to a voting center to turn out the vote for the municipal election.
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Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Renacci on Friday argued that the continued threat of mask mandates in schools will “endanger” children in Ohio.
According to a report from The Columbus Dispatch, state lawmakers are unlikely to pass legislation that would prevent the state and school districts from implementing a mask mandate.
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Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) and the communications office for Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler ignored The Virginia Star’s comment requests Friday, as more evidence emerged that the district covered up the alleged rape of a teenaged girl.
WTOP reported Thursday that Ziegler sent an email to the Loudoun County School Board (LCSB) on May 28, the day when a male student in a skirt allegedly raped a ninth-grade girl in the bathroom at Stone Bridge High School.
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Rookie GOP candidate Mike Carey has taken a comfortable lead in a recent poll heading into the last 10 days of the special election for Ohio’s 15th congressional district, a seat that opened up in May when newly re-elected U.S. Represenative Steve Stivers stepped down for a job in the private sector.
But the Republican nominee who emerged from a crowded early August primary continues to press on in a bid to keep the solid conservative district for the GOP amid a contentious political environment in Washington, D.C.
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An election integrity group has filed a lawsuit and motion for an injunction against members of the Fairfax County Board of Elections and the Fairfax County General Registrar.
“The case is brought on behalf of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, a local organization that promotes election integrity,” the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) said in a press release. “The lawsuit explains that Fairfax County is violating Virginia law by accepting and approving applications for absentee and mail-in ballots that do not include the last four digits of the applicant’s Social Security number, as required under Virginia statues.”
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Wisconsin’s Legislative Audit Bureau released its audit of the 2020 presidential election Friday, detailing numerous problems and issues it found with how the election was administered.
The nonpartisan panel reviewed election data from hundreds of cities and municipalities across Wisconsin, as well as written complaints concerning the General Election.
According to the report, the review board is recommending dozens of changes to how the state runs elections, as well as advocating for certain election laws to be adopted or revised.
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Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) officials announced this week that Georgia’s unemployment rate dropped three-tenths of a percentage point to 3.2 percent in September. GDOL officials said in an emailed press release that this is an all-time low for Georgia, dipping below the rate of 3.3 percent in January 2020. The number of employed people rose above 5 million for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, while the number of unemployed was reported at 161,786, the lowest level since June 2001.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has called for a special legislative session to resolve the issue of vaccine mandates in Florida. On Twitter, DeSantis said no one should lose their job over a vaccine.
“I am calling the Florida Legislature back for a Special Session to pursue stronger protections for Floridians against federal government mandates,” DeSantis said. “No one should lose their job over a COVID shot.”
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The City of Tucson initially backed off of mandating the COVID-19 vaccine after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued a legal opinion declaring it was illegal, but Tucson has now reversed itself again with a new 4-3 vote by the Tucson City Council. Any Tucson employee not in compliance by December 1 will be fired. Gov. Doug Ducey tweeted that it was “unfathomable” and had his General Counsel Annie Foster send City Attorney Mike Rankin a stern letter.
“It’s unfathomable that after a year as tough as last, the Tucson City Council voted to FIRE unvaccinated city employees,” Ducey tweeted. “The state Legislature has spoken on this issue — they want Arizonans and their sincerely held beliefs to be protected from overreaching mandates.”
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A group of Florida’s Supervisors of Elections have signed on to a letter entitled “Our Democracy, Our Priority” where they are asking officials across Florida to ease off of the rhetoric regarding questions of the validity of the 2020 presidential election.
They are asking Floridians to accept the results of the election: that then-President Donald Trump won Florida and President Joe Biden was elected president.
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Governor Ron DeSantis announced Friday in a press release that Florida’s job growth in September grew three times faster over the month than the rest of the nation.
According to the press release, overall for the month, Florida gained 84,500 total jobs, including nearly 73,000 private-sector jobs, which marks 17 months of private-sector job growth, increasing by 5.6% over the year.
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State Senator Bryce Reeves (R-Spotsylvania) is running for the GOP nomination for Virginia’s seventh congressional district. The region is considered a swing district and Republicans nationally expect to do well in the 2022 midterm congressional elections. The nominee will likely challenge incumbent Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-07), who has warned her party about the risks to moderates caused by progressive messaging and policy.
“Under President Trump our economy was humming, people were working, and government did not dominate or intrude in our lives and livelihood. But under Joe Biden and Abigail Spanberger, an intrusive, progressive government is failing us, badly. Spanberger has failed to make the Seventh District what it should be – the best place to work, live, and raise a family,” Reeves said in a Friday press release.
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The Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) on Friday released its findings of an audit on the state’s November 2020 election.
Based on its findings, the group recommended 30 recommendations to the Wisconsin Elections Commission for improving the election process, 18 of which are “issues for legislative consideration.”
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Staff at the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) have invited all state residents to eight regional public town halls later this month and throughout next month to discuss the state’s public education funding strategy.“These public town halls will spark localized conversations about student-based funding for public education in Tennessee and how to create a new strategy to best serve our students and ensure they are prepared for future success,” according to a TDOE press release.
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Downtown Nashville’s popular party bus services are set to face new rules issued by the Metro Council and Mayor John Cooper. One of the main effects of the new lawsuit, signed October 19th, is that alcohol will no longer be allowed on the busses, starting December 1st. Another change for the ‘transportainment ‘ is that starting April of 2022, the party busses will be regulated by Metro’s Transportation Licensing Commission.
In the Substitute Ordinance that Metro released after the meeting, it states that the reason behind the new regulation is that, “the Metropolitan Council is concerned that a continued failure to regulate entertainment transportation vehicles will permanently erode the cultural character of Nashville’s neighborhoods that has made the city a vibrant and enjoyable place to live, work, and visit.”
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Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) on Wednesday introduced President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting.
Hagerty, who served in the same position from 2017 to 2019, described Emanuel as “a qualified and capable nominee.”
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On Thursday in a press release, Tennessee Representative Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04) announced that he sent a letter to President Joe Biden regarding his executive order mandating COVID-19 vaccines for federal workers and the effects it will have on Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) employees.
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Sheer chaos and anarchy on the border?
Afghanistan—the most humiliating defeat in recent U.S. military history?
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News that the Bethesda, Maryland-based National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded Gain-of-Function research in Wuhan, China has prompted certain members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation to condemn Anthony Fauci as a liar and to demand drastic changes. Representative Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-01) tweeted about the matter on Thursday.
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Tennessee State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) on Thursday introduced a bill that would allow party affiliation to be designated during a school board election.
The legislation, if enacted, would alter the current election process, which allows individuals to campaign on a nonpartisan basis
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Williamson County School System Superintendent Jason Golden acknowledged this week that WCS students who will not wear COVID-19 masks or haven’t received medical or religious exemptions attend classes in separate rooms. This, according to the Nashville-based FOX 17. The station reported that a federal order prevents students from opting out of the mask mandate.
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The Biden administration abandoned an oil and gas drilling project in Alaska approved by former President Donald Trump, which it had previously defended.
The Department of the Interior failed to file an appeal to a federal judge’s August decision blocking the multi-billion dollar Willow Project being developed by the Texas-based oil and gas firm ConocoPhillips. Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court of the District of Alaska ruled that the federal government hadn’t adequately reviewed the emissions profile of the project, which she said would ultimately harm the environment and wildlife.
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The Department of Justice ended a Trump-era case quota for immigration judges, CNN Politics reported on Wednesday.
Judges said the Trump administration’s quota policy prioritized moving through cases quickly rather than due process for all immigrants and wasn’t fair, according to documents obtained by CNN. Immigration judges are tasked with moving through a 1.5 million case backlog, and case quotas didn’t necessarily make a difference in how quickly cases were processed, CNN reported.
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Facebook’s Oversight Board issued a transparency report Thursday scolding the tech giant for concealing details of its content review process and demanding more transparency.
The report criticized Facebook for failing to disclose the existence of its “cross-check” content review system, the details of which were leaked to The Wall Street Journal by Frances Haugen and published in September. The cross-check system applies different moderation standards to accounts belonging to celebrities or other popular accounts, which Facebook did not disclose when asked.
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Despite former President Donald J. Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announcing plans to become a rival of newly-launched social media site GETTR, the CEO of the latter firm welcomed Trump into the social media space.
“Congratulations to President Trump for re-entering the social media fray! Now Facebook and Twitter will lose even more market share. President Trump has always been a great deal-maker, but we just couldn’t come to terms on a deal,” Miller said in a Wednesday statement. “And get ready for the new platform features GETTR has on the way: live-streaming, GVision short videos and our GETTR Pay payments system capabilities. Exciting new additions that will provide our global customer base an even better user experience. Let the downloads begin!”
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Cuba officially signed on to a Chinese energy pact on Monday, strengthening President Xi Jinping’s relationship with Latin America at a time when the U.S. has warned that China’s influence is increasing in the region, Havana Live reported.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee State House Representative Scott Cepicky to the newsmakers line to explain why he voted no on Ford mega-site deal.
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The House of Representatives voted Thursday to hold former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress following his refusal to cooperate with the House’s investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
The resolution passed largely along party lines in a vote of 229-202, with nine Republicans voting in favor of the bill.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s Executive Director Deborah Fisher in studio to talk about their mission.
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The number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims decreased to 290,000 last week as employers attempt to hold onto workers amid struggles with inflation, supply chain disruptions and labor shortages.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics figure released Thursday shows a 6,000 claim decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending on Oct. 9, when jobless claims dipped below 300,000 for the first time since March 2020.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s Deborah Fisher to the studio who outlined the issues of clawback provisions related to large corporation deals.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Executive Director of Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, Deborah Fisher in studio to discuss reports lacking information on clawbacks yet redeemed.
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On Feb. 29, 2020, the U.S. and the Taliban signed the Doha Agreement, which set conditions for an American military withdrawal from Afghanistan. A few days later, then-President Donald Trump picked up the phone to call Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar. On that call, Trump explained to Baradar in no uncertain terms that, if he and his men didn’t fulfill the agreement, which included a pledge not to attack U.S. forces, the Taliban would suffer dearly. Not a single U.S. soldier was killed in combat in Afghanistan for the rest of Trump’s presidency.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed The Tennessee Star’s Executive Editor, Christina Botteri in studio to talk about the upcoming National Constitution Bee to be held this Saturday in Brentwood.
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Students as young as five years old may still need to wear masks in school after the COVID-19 vaccine is approved for children ages 5-11, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said in a White House briefing Wednesday. Walensky did not discuss if or when children would not be required to wear masks in school.
“After we have authorization from (the Food and Drug Administration) and recommendations from the CDC, we will be working to scale up pediatric vaccination. That said, it will take some time … as we head into these winter months, we know we cannot be complacent,” Walensky stated.
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When Joe Biden conducted his campaign for president largely in absentia last year, his value proposition to voters went something like this:
I’m Lunch Bucket Joe from Scranton and I’m for the little guy. I’m gonna fix all the mistakes of the last four years and bring transparency, competence, and compassion back to government.
Almost a year into the Biden presidency, that proposition has been exposed as snake oil. If “the little guy” refers to working-class American citizens, Biden has treated them with utter disdain, if not contempt. He clearly prioritizes foreign nationals from impoverished countries, as he is bringing them here in record numbers.
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Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York City, announced plans Thursday to file for a union election before the National Labor Relations Board next week.
Amazon Labor Union, which represents 2,000 Amazon workers, signed union authorization cards and announced plans to petition for an election, according to Vice. If the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) approves this request and the unionization vote succeeds, the workers would be the first Amazon employees to successfully unionize.
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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) was silent after agitators tampered with an Enbridge pipeline following her public calls to shut it down.
Anti-energy activists appeared to trespass on Enbridge property in Tuscola County to use a pipe wrench on an emergency shutoff valve Tuesday:
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