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The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) will accept applications beginning Monday, January 17 for grants from the state’s Tire Environmental Act Program (TEAP), according to a Friday press release by the department.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin is enacting some of his policies by executive order, but he’ll have to work with legislators to get other initiatives passed. Senator Bryce Reeves has introduced two bills focused on the governor’s goal to make Virginia more veteran friendly.
“The bills, carried by Senator Reeves on behalf of Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin, signal that Governor-elect Youngkin’s administration values military and veteran families across the commonwealth and recognizes that Virginia must compete to retain its recognition as one of the most military and veteran-friendly states,” a Friday Reeves press release said.
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Federal officials have sentenced a Jefferson County, Georgia woman to prison after she admitted she lied to obtain $150,000 in COVID-19 relief funding to spend on a vacation to Miami. That woman, Whitney Adwan Mack, 34, of Louisville, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and will serve 48 months in prison.
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On Thursday, Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) introduced the Chance to Compete Act, which would require federal agencies to focus hiring practices on the skills job seekers possess rather than whether and where they earned a college degree, according to a press release by Hagerty’s office.
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A Michigan professor has been placed on leave after an expletive-filled rant on a Zoom call, which he directed at students to open the semester.
The rant was largely centered around COVID-19 protocols.
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Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee have sentenced a Knoxville man to life plus 10 years in prison. Judge Thomas A. Varlan sentenced that man, Alim J. Turner, 23 last week.
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Federal officials gave convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a COVID-19 relief payment of $1,400 last year, and Georgia’s two U.S. senators helped defeat an amendment to a bill that would have prevented that from happening. Massachusetts prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday that Tsarnaev received this taxpayer money in June 2021.
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Just the News founder and Editor in Chief John Solomon appeared on The John Fredericks Show Wednesday morning to discuss his breaking story involving a massive ballot harvesting ring in Georgia exposed by the election integrity group True the Vote.
In all, the number of illegally cast ballots could number as high as 1,000,000, at a cost, one whistleblower says, of $10 per ballot.
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All members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation signed on to a letter urging President Joe Biden to approve an emergency declaration submitted by Governor Bill Lee.
The declaration, which was presented in early December, follows destruction from severe weather that impacted residents in Tennessee and Kentucky.
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The former co-campaign manager for Joseph K. Blystone’s gubernatorial campaign, who filed a complaint in October against that campaign, told The Star News Network she told two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents Blystone mishandled cash contributions to his campaign, while they told her their probe into Blystone goes beyond his run for governor.
Sarah Chambers said she met with the FBI special agents Julie Becker and Blane Wetzel November 18 in the Columbus field office at or around 1 p.m. “They don’t conduct interviews over the phone; they want to meet in person.”
The whistleblower said the FBI agents were very prepared for her interview. They each had copies of her complaint with many of the pages highlighted, along with printouts of articles from The Ohio Star.
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Georgia authorities have launched an investigation into an allegation of systematic ballot harvesting during the state’s 2020 general election and subsequent U.S. Senate runoff and may soon issue subpoenas to secure evidence, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed to Just the News.
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Senator Travis Hackworth (R-Tazewell) is seeking to repeal a requirement that Virginia school districts pass policies consistent with the Virginia Department of Education’s (VDOE) Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students. Alongside policy debates about COVID-19, equity, and accelerated learning, the transgender policies were a major source of contention in 2021 as local school boards were forced to comply with state law — even when local officials didn’t agree with the policy.
“Senator Hackworth believes that education decisions are always best made when handled locally among those closest to the children and families served in those schools,” Hackworth Legislative Aide Tom Lester said in a statement to The Virginia Star.
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The coronavirus has reached remote Antarctica, striking most of the 25 Belgian staffers at a research station, despite all of them being fully vaccinated, passing multiple PCR tests, and quarantining before arrival.
Two thirds of the researchers working in Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Polar Station have caught Covid, the Daily Telegraph reported, “proving there is no escape from the global pandemic.”
None of the cases are severe, according to the Telegraph. There are two emergency doctors at the station monitoring the situation.
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U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) said late last month that he wonders whether certain aspects of inflation haven’t happened by design, as a means of pushing the United States closer to socialism. Burchett said this on the talk show, Over-Caffeinated.
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A prominent doctor who has often challenged government and media narratives about the COVID-19 vaccines has been permanently banned from Twitter.
Dr. Robert Malone played a key role in the invention of the mRNA vaccine, the type of vaccine that is being administered to many Americans in an effort to stave off COVID-19. Malone has often been critical of the use of the vaccines, as well those in media and government who support them.
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Rosemarie Westbury’s life was turned upside down on April 9. Armored vehicles carrying federal agents equipped with fully-automatic rifles and battering rams were looking for her son.
It was 6:30 in the morning and Rosemarie was on her way to work as the sole breadwinner of the family. Her 62-year-old husband, Robert, has had eight strokes.
She received a terrifying call from one of her sons: the FBI was at their door.
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U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) said on the floor of the House this month that former U.S. President Donald Trump had “the most disgusting presidency in the history of this country.” Cohen said this as he declared he had voted for the Protecting Our Democracy Act. He said the bill, if enacted into law, would prevent presidential abuses of power, and it would also protect elections from foreign interference. The bill would also require Congressional oversight when the president grants self-pardons or pardons family members, administration officials, or paid campaign staffers.
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On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would be permanently extending the early release of thousands of federal inmates who were set free due to a spike in COVID cases, as reported by the New York Post.
In doing so, the DOJ reversed an order previously made by President Donald Trump in January that would have seen such prisoners eventually returned to confinement. Instead, over 5,000 prisoners will now either remain in home confinement or be allowed to roam completely free.
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Just a day after taking the Moderna booster shot, a New York Times editor unexpectedly died of a heart attack.
“This is Carlos’s wife, Nora. It’s with deepest sorrow that I have to share with you that Carlos passed away last night of a heart attack. I’ve lost my best friend and our kids lost a truly great dad. I will be off social media for awhile,” Carlos Tejada’s wife announced on his Twitter account on Dec. 18.
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After calling state vaccine mandates a “problem” on Dec. 7, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has apparently changed her mind and now supports them.
“I know if that mandate happens, we’re going to lose state employees,” Whitmer said on Dec. 7, the Greenville Daily News reported. “That’s why I haven’t proposed a mandate at the state level. Some states have. We have not, we’re waiting to see what happens in court.”
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Former Tennessee Congressman Zach Wamp, a Republican, is one of several former lawmakers who signed a letter this week applauding Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their work investigating the events of January 6. Representative Cheney, a Republican who serves Wyoming’s at-large Congressional district, serves as vice-chair of the January 6 Select Committee. Kinzinger (R-IL-16) also serves on the committee.
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The Mankato School Board voted unanimously earlier this month for a policy that may grant additional pay exclusively to non-white teachers.
The board is chaired by Jodi Sapp, who previously came under fire for requiring concerned parents to dox themselves in order to comment on school matters. Under her leadership, the board voted to amend district policy so that non-white teachers only may receive “additional stipends” to become mentors to other non-white colleagues. The new policy will also have the district “placing American Indian educators at sites with other American Indian educators and educators of color at sites with other educators of color.”
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Former Nashville mayoral candidate Dr. Carol Swain announced Wednesday afternoon she will be a guest on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Thursday for a Thanksgiving special.
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The Salvation Army wants its white donors to give it more than just money this Christmas season. Its leadership is also demanding they apologize for being racist.
It’s part of a push by the Christian charitable organization to embrace the ideas of Black Lives Matter, an activist group working to, among other things, “dismantle white privilege” and “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”
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A new Tennessee law prohibits COVID-19 mask mandates in schools, but Governor Bill Lee’s legislative counsel warned in a recent and now heavily publicized email that the law violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Legislative Counsel Liz Alvey sent the email October 30. The AP obtained Alvey’s email through a public records request.
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On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that the courts allow the agency to wait until the year 2076 to release all of the relevant documents regarding the approval of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, as reported by the Daily Caller.
The FDA made its request after a lawsuit was filed against the agency by the group Public Health Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT). The PHMPT had previously made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on September 9th asking for the release of the vaccine approval documents; after the FDA denied the request, the group filed its lawsuit on September 16th.
The FDA concluded that there were roughly 329,000 pages in total that would qualify under this FOIA request. In its appeal to the courts, the agency said that, at most, employees would be able to “process and produce the non-exempt portions of responsive records at a rate of 500 pages per month.” Under this process, the FDA said that it would hand over prioritized documents to the plaintiff, and release non-exempt documents on a “rolling basis.”
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Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) Chief John Drake last week announced a new Violent Crimes Division to investigate car jackings, armed robberies, and other violent incidents of an apparent serial nature.
According to an MNPD press release, this new division becomes effective December 1.
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In 2018, after a local news crew filmed Ryan Nichols rescuing dogs abandoned by their owners after Hurricane Florence, the former Marine appeared on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Not only did DeGeneres commend Nichols’ longtime work as a search-and-rescue volunteer, she donated $25,000 to the Humane Society in his name and gave Ryan and his wife, Bonnie, a $10,000 check to pay for the honeymoon they had missed the year before so Ryan could assist rescue efforts in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
But instead of heading to Hawaii, the Nicholses used the generous donation to buy a rescue boat. With his Marine buddy and best friend, Alex Harkrider, at his side, the pair has participated in “dozens of hurricane rescues and disaster relief efforts,” according to Joseph McBride, Nichols’ attorney.
Three years after his appearance on the DeGeneres show, Nichols was featured on another program, but this time, Nichols spoke from the fetid confines of a political prison in the nation’s capital. And instead of telling a heroic story of saving dogs drowning in rising flood waters, Nichols told Newsmax host Greg Kelly a harrowing tale of what he saw at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
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Law enforcement officers at Thursday’s Gwinnett County Public School (GCPS) Board meeting arrested two mothers, one on a charge of criminal trespass and another on a charge of obstruction as part of the school’s enhanced security measures. Both mothers told The Georgia News on Friday they did nothing wrong and that School Resource Officers (SROs) overreacted — to put it mildly.
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FRANKLIN — Quisha King, a former regional engagement coordinator for Black Voices for Trump, said she was once liberal, but the writings of conservative black economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams helped steer her on a different path. King said she her community had no prior access to Sowell or Williams.
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In a rare act for a state chief executive, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has referred the audited November 2020 election results in the state’s largest voting metropolis to the State Election Board after multiple reviews found significant problems with absentee ballot counting that included duplicate tallies, math errors and transposed data.
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Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles — flanked by several state legislators — declared a state of emergency in the county at a press conference on Thursday.
Ogles said the U.S. Constitution entitles health care workers to religious exemptions and other rights of conscience to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine. He also said the U.S. Constitution protects those workers from harassment or even job loss.
The Biden administration now mandates that healthcare workers vaccinate themselves against COVID-19, and Ogles warned his constituents Thursday that more than 1,000 local health care employees in Maury County could lose their jobs.
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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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The Virginia Supreme Court refused a petition to appeal the dismissal of a lawsuit over the missing signature on Terry McAuliffe’s election paperwork. On Wednesday, attorney Peter Hansen argued in a writ panel that the Court should take up the appeal, saying that McAuliffe failed to file a valid declaration of candidacy, and that when the City of Richmond Circuit Court dismissed the case, it did so based on speculation.
“Unfortunately, the trial court effectually made up facts. There’s nothing in the evidence, nothing in the record that suggested that Mr. McAuliffe was present when he didn’t sign the declaration. There’s nothing in evidence that suggests he raised his hand as if taking an oath, and that’s what ‘sworn to under my hand’ means,” Hansen told the panel.
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On August 24, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a memo to senior Pentagon leadership announcing that he was implementing a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for all military service members. The day before, the FDA had issued full authorization to Pfizer for their Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine product (the nomenclature of which is meant to be a mashup of the words “COVID”, “mRNA”, and “community”) . At first glance it would seem that the mandatory vaccination policy, while scientifically unsound and strategically foolish, was at least a policy being implemented according to both the letter of the directive and in accordance with the law. But a further examination of the facts and the manner in which this order is being implemented makes clear that the military’s implementation of this order is illegal and highly unethical.
In the memo, Secretary Austin issued a directive and a promise, that “Mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance.” The problem with this is that the Comirnaty vaccine product that was approved by the FDA is not available anywhere in the Military Health System. It is not even in production, according to the military’s TRICARE healthcare providers. If a soldier goes to a military hospital or a private provider to receive an approved Pfizer COVID vaccine, he will be administered the unapproved Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which is a vaccine that is not approved but has been administered under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). We are told that this is but a brand name difference, that the formulation is the same, and they can be used interchangeably. But as the FDA was approving the Comirnaty product, they were renewing the authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech product. If it’s just a matter of brand name, why issue an approval for one brand name and an EUA renewal for the other? This is because they are not actually the same.
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A Georgia pastor and tax preparer is in trouble with the law after federal authorities indicted him on charges of COVID-19 recovery assistance fraud. This, according to a press release that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia published this week.
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The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch is looking into complaints that employees working for the Town of Gilbert misused their positions to push the “Marxist agenda of Black Lives Matter.” Gilbert Mayor Brigette Peterson said she just found out that Judicial Watch submitted a FOIA request back in August for information relating to the potentially improper behavior of several employees, and is now asking the Gilbert Town Council to join her in asking for an outside investigation.
Mark Spencer, the Southwest Projects Coordinator for Judicial Watch who submitted the FOIA, told The Arizona Sun Times, “One might be led to believe the Town Manager’s office is allowing a costly liberal social experiment to be conducted on Gilbert taxpayers. The endorsement of Marxist literature such as The 1619 Project, White Fragility and How To Be An Antiracist appears to have taken roots in the altering of employee testing processes by injecting equal outcome practices based on gender and ethnicity over skill and competency. Citizens are put at risk when this type of bias is allowed by management into a first-responder hiring process.”
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Tennessee native and famous country music singer Dolly Parton is set to hold her first concert since 2016 that will raise money for breast cancer victims. All of the proceeds from Parton’s “Kiss Cancer Goodbye Benefit Concert” on October 24th will benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
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Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos said on Tuesday that they will not be releasing documents pertaining to the ongoing election investigation yet. An open records lawsuit was filed by American Oversight, a liberal group who disagrees with the investigation.
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Former President Donald Trump issued a statement on October 15 denouncing the results of an investigation of mail-in ballots in Pima County’s 2020 election, calling for either the results for president to be decertified with Trump declared the winner or hold a new election. He said the election was “Rigged and Stolen,” citing “staggering anomalies and fictitious votes” that “stuffed the ballot box” with more ballots than were sent out in some precincts. Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley), who is running for Arizona Secretary of State, echoed Trump’s claims, saying there are “34,000 or 35,000 fictitious voters” in Pima County.
Trump said the analysis was done from publicly available election data, and showed that mail-in ballots returned in Pima County during the election initially showed him up 3 points over other Republicans, with Joe Biden underperforming other Democrats by 3 points. Then the mail-in ballots started returning at an abnormally high rate, over 87%, and Trump suddenly started performing worse and Biden better. However, “they overplayed their hand, and got caught. Two precincts in Pima had over 100 percent turnout for mail-in ballots — which is impossible — and 40 precincts had over 97% returned.”
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Tennessee high school sports will not be mandating masks for their players or sporting events, according to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA). They are currently adhering to some of the rules that were instituted for the fall 2020 season, which include distancing and in some cases limiting onlooker capacity for sporting events.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday failed to formally file an appeal in federal court against an injunction that was issued against one of the most controversial aspects of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill, leaving the future of planned reparations for non-White farmers in doubt, as reported by Politico.
Monday was the deadline for the DOJ to do so, 60 days after federal judges ultimately ruled that the $4 billion program, which would forgive the debts of exclusively non-White farmers, was unconstitutional and thus could not be implemented. The measure was one of many elements of the bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Joe Biden in March.
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Jennifer Bridges knew what was coming when her director at Houston Methodist hospital called her up in June to inquire about her vaccination status.
Bridges, a 39-year-old registered nurse, responded “absolutely not” when asked if she was vaccinated or had made an effort to get vaccinated. She was terminated on the spot.
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The Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and the desperate situation in Kabul has angered U.S. allies, leaving them scrambling to evacuate their citizens and the Afghans who supported them during the 20 year war.
The United Kingdom’s Parliament on Wednesday held Joe Biden in contempt for Afghan debacle, with one veteran MP saying the U.S. abandoned its Afghan allies and disregarded their sacrifices.
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Stephen K. Bannon called on former President Donald Trump to begin putting together “a more formal body… what the British call a ‘shadow government’,” … to counter “this illegitimate regime from destroying the country as they spin out of control,” on Saturday’s edition of War Room.
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On Wednesday, a judge appointed by Barack Obama argued that it is “racist” to prosecute illegal aliens who return to the country after being deported and commit crimes on American soil, as reported by Breitbart.
Judge Miranda Du, appointed by Obama to the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada in 2012, made the statements in a ruling in favor of a previously-deported illegal named Gustavo Carrillo-Lopez. Lopez had filed a motion to dismiss an indictment against him for the crime of illegally re-entering the country, baselessly claiming that such a charge was “discriminatory.” He claimed, without evidence, that federal law allowing for the deportation of illegals is in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed (TN-2) Congressman Tim Burchett to the newsmakers line to get his reaction and predictions on the destructive withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Thursday praising Georgia Star News journalist Laura Baigert for her investigative reporting efforts.
“Thank you and congratulations to Laura Baigert of the Georgia Star News on the incredible reporting you have done. Keep going! The scam is all unraveling fast!” President Trump said of her reporting.
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Georgia gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones just returned from Arizona where he observed an audit of ballots from the November 2020 presidential election and also witnessed up-close what he said was a calamity at the U.S.-Mexico border. Jones talked to The Georgia Star News Thursday. He said a firm overseeing the audit has done a thorough and professional job that leaves little room to allow mistakes. Jones did not name the firm.
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A USA TODAY article dives into Michigan’s vaccine focus on “equity” instead of protecting those most vulnerable to COVID-19. A surge of COVID-19 cases late in the pandemic killed 2,500 people.
“But in the race to put shots in arms, Michigan lost. Its vaccination rate lagged Minnesota’s, exacerbating a late-pandemic spike in cases that killed 2,500 people,” USA TODAY reported. “The vaccination gap between Minnesota and Michigan was particularly high for older people.”
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