MacOS – Can you ‘drag and drop’ text and drop formatting at once

After selecting the text, place your three fingers on the trackpad and don't drag for a half-second or so. Then, slowly drag your fingers until you see the I-beam cursor turn into the mouse pointer. Then you can three-finger drag normally.

When using click and drag for text, you need to hold the click for a half-second or so before the system realizes you want to drag the text instead of selecting it. This procedure replicates that with the three-finger drag gesture. (As you get better at this place-hold-slow-fast gesture, you can speed it up to a point where you're comfortable with the speed and it still works.)

You can use OptionShift⌘-V to paste and match the current style. This removes all previous formatting, links, etc.

If you would like to make this the default action when pressing ⌘V, open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts, and select Application Shortcuts from the list on the left. Then, hit + to make a new shortcut, select Notes.app from the dropdown list, enter Paste and Match Style exactly in the Menu Title box, then hit ⌘V with your cursor in the Keyboard Shortcut box. After hitting Add, you can flip back to Notes.app and click on the Edit menu to see that the shortcut has been reassigned.