WINNING: The Left’s Lawfare Scorecard Against Trump Is Looking Pretty Bad at This Point.

SAD: College students can’t — or won’t — read, say profs. “Furthermore, ‘a significant number of those who do the work seem unable to analyze complex or lengthy texts,’ say professors at colleges ranging from Wellesley to Cal State LA. Students don’t seem to ‘have the context to understand certain arguments or points of view.'”

This is not an accident.

THIS COURT IS AN EMBARRASSMENT TO KANGAROOS: Dershowitz Destroys Judge Merchan After Attending Trump Trial.

FLASHBACK: Journalists drink too much, are bad at managing emotions, and operate at a lower level than average, according to a new study.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: How to Murder a Popular Restaurant Chain with This 1 Weird Trick. “There’s so much more to the story than a money-losing menu item.”

BREAKING: Defense Rests in Trump Trial—Maybe Now DA Will Reveal What the Crime Is.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Starfish Space lands $37.5 million Space Force contract for on-orbit servicing vehicle. “DoD’s satellites in GEO typically lack the ability to easily move themselves around. The Otter spacecraft would provide augmented maneuver by docking and attaching to the client satellite and using Otter’s own propulsion systems, giving the military satellite a push or a pull, making specific movements or adjustments to its orbit.”

It could do the same to the other guy’s satellites, too.

IT ISN’T THAT BIDEN FORGETS, IT’S THAT HE SAYS SO MANY THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED: Biden Questions Intelligence of Trump’s Next Supreme Court Pick, Forgetting His Own Dumb Nominees.

WOEING: Saudi Arabia’s biggest-ever plane order isn’t going to Boeing.

Saudi Arabia’s national airline has placed an order for 105 Airbus airplanes in the largest-ever deal in the country’s aviation history — another win for troubled Boeing’s European rival.

Ibrahim Al-Omar, director general of Saudia Group, the state-controlled owner of the Saudia airline and low-cost carrier Flyadeal, said Monday that the first planes would be delivered in the first quarter of 2026.

“The Saudia Group announces today the largest deal in the history of Saudi aviation,” he said in a speech at the Future Aviation Forum in Riyadh, referring to the contract with Airbus.

Saudia Group’s current fleet comprises 93 Airbus and 51 Boeing aircraft, according to its website. And the latest deal adds to the group’s existing backlog of Airbus orders of 39 aircraft, the European airplane maker said in a statement.

Boeing management seems satisfied with Airbus’s leftovers, so that’s what they’ll mostly get.

WARNING: Windows Chatbot Will Watch Literally Everything You Do.

MEDICINE: Elon Musk’s Neuralink Gets FDA Green Light for Second Patient, as First Describes His Emotional Journey.

Arbaugh said that Neuralink has told him around 15% of the threads inserted in his brain remain in place. But these have stabilized, he said, and software changes made by the company later helped him regain many of the device’s capabilities, which he has since demonstrated in livestreams.

Since such a device had never been implanted in a human before, Neuralink didn’t know how much the brain would move inside the skull, said Arbaugh. It found that his brain moved up to three times what the company expected, he said.

To keep threads in place, one of Neuralink’s proposed solutions that the FDA has signed off on is to implant them eight millimeters into the brain’s motor cortex, compared with about three-to-five millimeters for Arbaugh.

With the FDA’s blessing, Neuralink now hopes to implant a second participant sometime in June, according to the person familiar with the company, who said that more than 1,000 quadriplegics have signed up for its patient registry, though fewer than 100 qualify for the study.

And while some of those people are eligible, Musk posted on X on Thursday that the company is still accepting applications.

Neuralink aims to implant 10 people with its device this year and hopes to have a diverse set of recipients in order to study a variety of behaviors. One challenge is that the people signing up to its patient registry skew white and male, the person said.

Better informed about medical advances? Higher risk tolerance? Coincidence?

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Thanks Joe! How China and Mexico Are Making Mad Stacks Killing Americans. “It’s implausible to suggest that Biden, whose own kids have been to rehab, isn’t aware that roughly 100,000 Americans from every step of the socioeconomic ladder are dying in record numbers.”

THE CHINA SYNDROME: China’s property support measures disappoint.

Shares of Chinese developers wobbled on Monday as investors fretted that China’s “historic” steps to stabilise its crisis-hit property sector fell short of what is required to foster a sustainable turnaround in demand and confidence.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Mainland Properties Index (.HSMPI), opens new tab closed down 0.7%, after having gained around 18% so far this month after the Politburo said in an April 30 meeting that it would coordinate to clear housing inventory.
Embattled state-backed developer China Vanke eased 0.2%, after bouncing as much as 6.4% in the morning session. Shimao Group (0813.HK), opens new tab, R&F Properties (2777.HK), opens new tab, Kaisa Group (1638.HK), opens new tab and KWG Group (1813.HK), opens new tab were down more than 10% each.

China unveiled measures on Friday to facilitate up to 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) in funding and ease mortgage rules, with local governments set to buy “some” apartments.

As part of those steps, the central bank said it would set up a 300 billion yuan ($41.49 billion) relending facility for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to purchase completed and unsold homes at “reasonable prices” for affordable housing.

The central bank expects the relending programme would result in 500 billion yuan worth of bank financing.

My takeaway is that the money is too little and that depending on debt-heavy SOEs to do the lending is too much.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It’s Time for Biden to Get to the Basement and Stay There. “Yesterday, I mentioned that the Democrats’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media gloss over Biden’s various lies. They have finally allowed themselves admit that he’s old, but these monumental screw-ups don’t get reported on. They’re in full cheerleader mode trying to get him over the finish line in November. The propagandists can’t really keep pointing out that their standard-bearer is a slurring, babbling idiot.”

LEGALIZATION: Hospital Visits For Cannabis Poisoning Tripled Among Seniors After Canada Legalization, Study Finds. “The number of older Canadians who faced cannabis poisoning without heading to a hospital is likely higher, researchers noted, adding the study was limited to emergency room visit data. Some adults may sought medical care somewhere else or not at all, as some of the data includes a period during the Covid-19 pandemic, the study said.”

CHRIS QUEEN: The World Needs More Happy Warriors — And I Know Where to Find Them.

MARGOT CLEVELAND: I Researched Judicial Ethics Rules For Years. Here’s Why The Alito Recusal Calls Are Ridiculous.

The false flag of an ethical scandal was clear from The New York Times’ spin in breaking the story on Thursday under the headline: “At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display.” From the Old Gray Lady’s header, one would think the Alitos had displayed a banner brandishing the phrase outside their home.

But no, as the article soon acknowledged, it was an upside-down American flag seen flying outside the home where Justice Alito lives with his wife. And it was his wife who raised the flag — in protest of a neighbor displaying a profane yard sign, as we would soon learn.

The Times, though, quoted supposed ethics experts, including Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, to frame the hanging of an upside-down flag as a public declaration of “Stop the Steal.” This is “the equivalent of putting a ‘Stop the Steal’ sign in your yard,” Frost reportedly told The New York Times.

That’s quite the leap of logic — and one even the Times’ reporters refrained from making. (Frost did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment). The Times instead left its readers to infer the upside-down flag professed a “Stop the Steal” sentiment by noting some of Trump’s supporters had inverted Old Glory in contesting the 2020 election results.

Plus: “The Times’ Thursday hit piece ignored that advisory opinion which made clear the Code of Conduct does not control Mrs. Alito’s behavior — and neither does Justice Alito.”

PAULA BOLYARD: Ann Coulter: Long COVID ‘Total B.S.’ Made Up by ‘Neurotic Liberal Women.’ “Well, good for you, Ann. I’m glad you haven’t had to deal with the effects of COVID long after being infected by the Wuhan virus. The fact that you don’t know any conservatives who have long COVID is perhaps more a reflection of who you hang out with than anything else. (Yeah, I said ‘Wuhan virus.’ Go ahead and demonetize this column, Google.*)”

It isn’t that Long COVID is a myth but its effects don’t seem to be any worse than those caused by other respiratory infections.

PROCUREMENT: GDLS delivers first tranche of M10 Booker vehicles. “Booker will be assigned to the Army’s Infantry Brigade Combat Teams. The vehicle moves rapidly in a variety of terrain conditions to engage and destroy enemy combatants, bunkers, machine gun positions, fortifications and other Armoured combat vehicles.”

It looks like a tank and it’s crewed like a tank but it is not a tank.

HE’S THE HONEST KIND OF CROOK WHO STAYS BOUGHT: Biden’s ’Inflation Reduction Act’ Enriches Commie China.

INFLATION WAS BECAUSE OF GREEDY BUSINESSES BUT NOW THEY AREN’T GREEDY ANYMORE SO THAT’S NICE: Target starts price war with Walmart by slashing the cost of 5,000 popular items.

EMBRACE THE HEALING POWER OF AND: Funny or Sad? Now Biden Says He Was Vice President During the Pandemic.

HOW IS STARTED: What the right’s gas stove freakout was really about. “Republicans and conservative pundits have spent the past week nonetheless expressing alarm about the fate of Americans’ ranges and cooktops — in line with previous GOP complaints about real or imagined threats to hamburgers, toilets, air travel, incandescent light bulbs and gasoline-powered cars.”

(It’s almost impossible to believe that Alex Guillen and Ben Lefebvre wrote that with straight faces.)

How it’s going: New research shows gas stove emissions contribute to 19,000 deaths annually. “We certainly don’t want to be alarmist. On the other hand, day after day, year after year, using a stove that the exposure really does build up and does increase the risk of all these respiratory diseases.”

But are the results reproducible?

OUCH: Michael Cohen Makes a Shocking Admission on the Witness Stand.

BRAVE SIR ROBIN BRAVELY TURNED AND FLED: Alarmed Democrats flee Biden’s ailing brand in battleground states.

“If you go out there and do a focus group, the focus groups all say, ‘He’s 200 years old. You got to be kidding me.’ And the worst part about it is for unaffiliated voters or people that haven’t made up their mind, they look at this and say: ‘You have to be kidding us. These are our choices?’ And they indict us for not taking it seriously,” said a Democratic senator who requested anonymity to discuss the alarm sparked by Biden’s weak poll numbers in battleground states.

Polls have shown that 40 percent of registered voters in battleground states were not too satisfied or not at all satisfied with the candidates in the presidential election.

The senator said Democratic colleagues “know this is a problem” but also realize it’s too late to do anything about it and that “this is the ticket we have to get behind and we have to win with this ticket.”

“We’ll see how much gravity we can defy,” the lawmaker said of senators in tough races who are polling better than Biden.

A second Democratic senator when asked about Biden’s poll numbers said that the president’s age is a persistent concern among voters.

“Biden’s showing his age in ways weirdly more than Trump,” said the senator, who noted that Trump, who is 77, is only four years younger than Biden, 81.

“People keep saying, ‘Why didn’t he take a pass he’s just so tired?’” the senator said of constituents who are baffled over Biden’s decision to run for a second term. “That is such a prevalent feeling.”

Even in a story about Biden’s troubles specifically and the Democrats generally, the first third is mostly “BUT TRUMP!” The Hill has to bring its readers over to the truth as gently as possible.

I’d just add that if Trump has maybe lost half a step over the last three years, Biden has been on the decline for much longer — and started with far fewer steps he could afford to lose.