🇺🇸 A Crippling Crisis

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Good morning, and happy Wednesday! A stray puppy warmed the hearts of millions in a video showing it pleading with its new owner to adopt its toy teddy bear too.

Plus, should you wash ground beef? This expert weighs in on the viral cooking method.

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FLAG POLLS

📉 Tuesday, March 28, President Biden Job Approval: Approve 47, Disapprove 51 (Rasmussen Reports)

📉 Monday, March 27, President Biden Job Approval: Approve 47, Disapprove 51 (Rasmussen Reports)

📉 Monday, March 27, Direction of Country: Right Track 38, Wrong Track 57 (Rasmussen Reports)

🐘 Saturday, March 25, 2024 Republican Presidential Nomination: Trump 44, DeSantis 30, Pence 5, Haley 3, Cruz, T. Scott, Pompeo 1, Noem, Youngkin 1 (Reuters/Ipsos)

TRENDING

Left: House Republicans Define Dysfunctional Politics Juan Williams, The Hill

Left: GOP Only Wants To Protect White, Conservative Parents Hayes Brown, MSNBC

Left: The Fair and Unfair Critiques of Kamala Harris Li Zhou, Vox

Right: Biden Puts Woke Politics Before American Workers Helen Raleigh, The Federalist

Right: Count on a Conservative Comeback in U.S. & Canada Conrad Black, NY Sun

Right: Florida Sets Shining Example on School Choice Bedrick & Burke, Fox News

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QUICK CLICKS

The Names in Nashville, Philly's Water, Jim Jordan's Deadline

US: Young children, the head of their school, and its custodian. These are the victims of the Nashville school shooting (CNN) + Nashville school shooter legally owned 7 guns, had 'emotional disorder,' police say: Here's everything we know (Yahoo News)

World: At least 40 die in fire during protest at migrant center in Mexico, officials say (Reuters)

US: Philly tap water still safe to drink and ‘will not be impacted’ by chemical spill, city says (NPR)

US: Jim Jordan Gives IRS Hard Deadline to Hand Over Documents on Matt Taibbi (Newsweek)

Tech: Microsoft lets generative AI loose on cybersecurity (TechCrunch)

US: NY grand jury not expected to vote on possible Trump indictment this week (NBC News)

World: French protests intensify in test for Macron; police bolster security amid warnings radicals seek 'to destroy' (Fox News)

DRUGS

A Crippling Crisis

Recent Congressional hearings led by Republicans have focused on the ongoing opioid crisis, and what GOP lawmakers say is a direct link between border insecurity, rising crime, and a seemingly constant stream of overdose deaths.

Reporting from the Right: Mexican president says lack of 'hugs and embraces,' not drug cartels, to blame for fentanyl crisis (Fox News)

Reporting from the Left: What makes fentanyl so dangerous and how can people prevent overdoses? Our expert explains (CNN)

From The Flag: During hearings, Congressional Democrats have noted American citizens are trafficking in fentanyl to meet seemingly insatiable demand for these drugs. Of all fentanyl captured in the US, 90% is found while entering border crossings. Here’s more from both sides.

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Hands Reaching Across the Border, and Into Our Communities

• Through a collaborative approach/crackdown, the US and Mexican governments can work together to address the situation.

• We’ll have more success by focusing on community support, compassion, and faster drug treatment.

• Counterfeit oxycodone pills are flooding across the southern border, a sad reminder of the role Big Pharma played in this crisis.

“Only one thing will solve the fentanyl crisis” Sam Quinones, Washington Post Opinion: “To anyone paying attention… the United States… no longer faces only a drug problem. It faces a national poisoning. The supplies of fentanyl and methamphetamine here have surpassed anything previously imaginable. … But this needn’t remain an intractable crisis. It is one the US and Mexican governments have the ability to address… fentanyl and meth — synthetics produced in clandestine labs — make Mexican traffickers more vulnerable than ever to aggressive, binational law enforcement. … How about starting with a sustained attempt to gain control of and regulate the supply of chemicals entering Mexican ports? How about a far more aggressive approach to stopping weapons heading south into Mexico? These days, there’s a saying on US streets: ‘Fentanyl changes everything.’ … But my hope is that it will also change relations between the United States and Mexico — for the sake of people on both sides of the border.”

“I Lost My Grandson to Fentanyl. We Owe Kids a Lot More” Luis J. Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times Opinion: “We must turn our sense of helplessness into healing and then action. Politicians like to spout ‘tough on crime’ policies, which for the last 40 years have been given full rein. They’ve failed. Instead, let’s try caring and community strengthening. Let’s try faster and more comprehensive drug treatment, full mental health services and healing arts practices, which have shaped my community work… In the largely working-class Latino and Black community of the northeast San Fernando Valley, my wife, Trini, and I helped create Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore, which also offers a program called Trauma to Transformation that sends artists, poets and theater workers to prisons, juvenile lockups and parolee housing. I know from experience that these mentoring and guidance programs help people.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: After 15 years of reporting on opioids, I know this to be true Darren Foster, CNN

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

We Respond with Hugs and Laughter, Then Wonder Why It Won’t Stop

• Republican Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne says the Mexican government shows no willingness to crackdown on drug smuggling.

• While dismissing a political attack concerning the southern border, President Biden chuckled in reference to two overdose deaths.

• Biden has ordered the Border Patrol to focus on processing illegal immigrants, rather than intercepting drugs.

“It’s Time To End Mexican Cartels’ Reign of Terror” Rep. Beth Van Duyne, RealClearPolitics: “Despite the tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars that have flowed to Mexico to help with law enforcement personnel, training, and economic expansion support, Mexico is functionally controlled by the panoply of drug cartels who receive ‘hugs, not bullets’ from the Mexican president. Taken together with Biden’s Open Border policies, López Obrador and Biden are a Mexican drug cartel Dream Team, and the people of BOTH countries are suffering mightily. Clearly, a more direct engagement with the drug cartels, much like how we treated ISIS, is in order if we are to seriously combat the deadly consequences they are inflicting on the American public. Conducting these targeted operations cannot involve corrupt and infiltrated Mexican authorities. Only an unleashed and empowered American military and intelligence agency can deliver the kind of direct assaults the Mexican drug lords so richly deserve.”

“Biden’s laugh at fentanyl deaths for cheap political points exposes the real Joe” Editorial Board, New York Post: “Just remember, America: If your kids overdose on fentanyl, President Biden will laugh about it to score cheap political points. … Biden smirked off an attack by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.) over the testimony of Rebecca Kiessling, whose sons Caleb and Kyler died from the drug. ‘That fentanyl they took came during the last administration,’ chortled the prez, adding a heartless ‘heh, heh.’ … ‘How dare you,’ responded Rebecca. And rightly so — that sociopathic little chuckle exposes the real Joe: utterly heartless… focused solely on politics no matter the human cost, and bluntly indifferent to a true tragedy. Yes, this poison was destroying lives under President Donald Trump (and President Barack Obama before him). But it was under Biden — who from his literal first day in office began to undermine and erode any real border security — that the figures for synthetic opioid deaths (i.e., primarily fentanyl-driven) skyrocketed.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: The state of President Biden is weak, thanks to his fentanyl crisis Marshall & Knudsen, Fox News

FLAG THIS

1 in 3 Republicans Say Opioids Are Top Public Health Concern

Polling data released late last month shows 37% of Republicans listed fentanyl and other opioids as the nation’s top public health concern, compared to 17% of Democrats who felt the same way.

Meanwhile, 35% of Democrats listed gun violence as the top public health concern, while just 4% of Republicans agreed.

The CDC says the US recorded 107,477 overdose deaths from August 2021 to August 2022. That’s slightly lower year-over-year, but a significant increase over pre-pandemic levels (Axios-IPSOS).

FLAG FINDS

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WATERCOOLER

US Withdraws From Vietnam, Thinking Out Loud, Mindfulness Hurts

On This Day in 1973: Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees many of the remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam and America’s direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War nears its end.

Every: Five lesser-known benefits of thinking out loud

The Atlantic: Mindfulness Hurts. That’s Why It Works.

CNBC Make It: Psychologist shares the No. 1 exercise highly successful people use to be happier

Today I Learned that there are official guidelines for Muslims to perform their rituals from space ever since 2007, when the first Malaysian astronaut joined the space station.