THE SHOW NOTES: Merrick Garland Doesn’t Want to Fight the Fentanyl War

Welcome! The word “mother” is considered offensive at Politico.

HEADLINE: Semafor Says It Wants To Fix the 'Crisis of Trust in News.' It Just Partnered With a Chinese Communist Influence Group. - WFB

2024: Youngkin resumes out-of-state travel amid mixed signals on 2024 plans

QUESTION: What sparked D.C.'s sudden, dramatic anti-China shift?

BREAKING: Chicago police officer killed while chasing armed teen suspect - Fox News

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Clip of the day: Biden flippantly discusses a mom who lost two sons to fentanyl.

Breaking911 @Breaking911

BIDEN: "[Marjorie Taylor Greene] was saying that a poor mother who lost 2 kids to fentanyl, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is, that fentanyl they took came during the last administration."

The mom: Here’s more.

RNC Research @RNCResearch

Powerful testimony from a mom who lost her two sons to fentanyl poisoning: "You talk about children being taken away from their parents? My children were taken away from me. 100,000 Americans every year are having their children...taken away from them."

Merrick’s Bad Day

Merrick Garland told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the United States is unable to designate Mexican drug cartels trafficking fentanyl across the border as terrorist organizations over diplomatic complications with the Mexican government. Garland went on to claim that the Justice Department currently has the tools to fight the drug cartels but was unable to explain why the problem is monumentally worse now than ever.

Note: Fentanyl trafficked by Mexican drug cartels is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45.

Bad to worse: The hearing seemingly went from bad to worse as Garland was unable to give coherent answers to Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and other Senators on the committee. Here are just a few examples:

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson

Lion Ted Cruz MAULS AG Garland to absolute SHREDS for ignoring threats against Supreme Court Justices🔥

Josh Hawley @HawleyMO

FBI says “traditionalist Catholics” are a terrorist risk and should be monitored. So how many spies and sources do they have in America’s churches? Garland won’t answer

Real Mac Report @RealMacReport

Lindsey Graham: "Do you support mandatory minimums for people dealing in fentanyl?" AG Garland: "I think we already have mandatory minimums.. " Graham: "Do you think they should be increased?" AG Garland: "We have more than enough ability now to attack this problem."

Biden Vetos Democrats

Joe Biden is set to veto a GOP-backed resolution supported by two Senate Democrats that would undo a Biden rule allowing retirement managers to incorporate ESG requirements into retirement plans.

Details: Joe Manchin and Jon Tester - two Democrats up for reelection in red states - crossed the aisle and backed the GOP motion teeing President Biden up for his first veto.

Why this matters: Allowing retirement planners to consider climate and social factors in the screening process for allowing companies into their investment funds hurts the overall return and ultimately takes money out of the pocket of retirees.

🚨 MUST READ: Time to Unleash an Extraordinary Weapon Against Fentanyl

Politico has a guest essay from a Salvadoran guerrilla leader and a US Marine on the fentanyl crisis. Here’s an excerpt but you should read the whole thing here.

But one tool to combat fentanyl has been overlooked. If members of Congress or the Biden administration really want to take on this deadly drug, there is an opportunity to seriously debilitate the organized criminal syndicates that make, import and distribute it to the American people: Secretary of State Antony Blinken should designate these narco-syndicates as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The rest of the news:

• Fox News election fraud revelations could take down the network’s embattled chief - CNN

• Kellyanne Conway meets with Manhattan prosecutors investigating Trump - ABC

• Trump is poised for a CPAC love fest or face plant. There is no in between. - Politico

• Tesla’s stock falls 5% as Elon Musk’s ‘Master Plan 3’ is short on details about both cars and finances - Marketwatch

• White House pitches $1.6 billion plan to combat Covid relief fraud - NBC

• Japan births fall to record low as population crisis deepens - CNN

• America Is In Over Its Head - NYT (paywall)

Tweets that caught my eye:

Alexis De Popeville @JohnPaulThee3rd

The @washingtonpost Editorial Board, six months apart Utterly shameless

Bill Melugin @BillFOXLA

NEW: Per federal source, Border Patrol has now seized over 800 lbs of fentanyl between ports of entry in the last 4 months. In the same time frame, CBP reports seizing at least 12,000 lbs of fentanyl at POEs since 10/1. DEA says 2.2 lbs = potentially 500,000 lethal doses.

Erick Erickson @EWErickson

"I assure you, if it were really censorship, they would not have traded Newsmax for Bill O’Reilly, but that is what they did because The First does not charge DirecTV to carry it."

open.substack.com“Not Red Or Blue—It Is Green”I turned down an advertisement on my radio show that would have generated a good bit of revenue for my small syndication footprint. The ad would have been a live read for Newsmax. But I did not want to take the angle of telling my listeners DirecTV is censoring Newsmax. It is not true.

Market snapshot: