A BITE OF THE APPLE: The Justice Department joined with 16 states and the District of Columbia to file an 88-page lawsuit accusing Apple of monopolizing the cellphone market by making it less likely for customers to buy or switch to a competing device. It’s part of a government effort to crack down on the power of Big Tech. 

  The feds are suing in part because most people will first see this news on an iPhone. Apple’s domination of the phone and device market has made it into a $2.75 trillion worldwide company. Apple tightly reserves its core services for iPhone, for instance the digital wallet. A picture or video sent from an Android to an iPhone does not have its original clarity or quality. Android users cannot join a group chat on Apple.

  The complaint claims Apple’s practices result in “higher prices and less innovation.” It says, “Each step in Apple’s course of conduct built and reinforced the moat around its smartphone monopoly.” 

  An Apple spokeswoman responded that if the lawsuit succeeds, “It would also set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology.”

ORANGE ALERT: The New York attorney general’s office is already taking steps to seize property from Donald Trump to cover the $465 million penalties and interest in the former president’s lost civil fraud case. Trump has a Monday deadline to post a bond to cover the sum, put up the cash, or start losing property and bank accounts.

  The AG filed judgments in Westchester County to begin taking Trump’s Seven Springs estate and golf course north of Manhattan.

  The state can’t just outright seize property. They have to put liens on assets or move in court to foreclose on properties. It’s also not ideal for the state, which doesn’t necessarily want to become the landlord for Trump Tower.

JUDICIAL ODDITY: The federal judge in the Donald Trump classified documents case made the unusual demand this week for the defense and prosecution before the trial is even scheduled to submit proposed jury deliberation instructions normally given at the end of testimony 

  Legal experts say it’s one of the oddest things they’ve ever seen a judge do and that US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida is focused on the end of the trial long before it opens. Some speculate that she’s angling to dismiss the case.

  Cannon was appointed under the Trump administration and has displayed a lack of judicial knowledge and experience. She has already had major decisions in the case reversed at the appeals level.

  In her two-page order Cannon suggests she may believe that that the Presidential Records Act allows Trump to declare highly classified documents to be his personal property. Experts in national security law say that is not at all what the law says, or how it has been interpreted over decades by the courts.

CAREER KILLER: President Trump on January 6^th, 2021 told Vice President Mike Pence that if he certified the election of Joe Biden it would be a career killer, according to a White House valet’s account to the House January 6th investigating committee.

  “Mike, this is a political career killer if you do this,” Trump told Pence by telephone on the morning of January 6th, according to a transcript of the unnamed valet’s testimony obtained by The NY Times. The transcript is heavily redacted with whole pages of lines blacked out except for the “Q” and “A.” The valet’s name also is redacted.

  The valet said he recalled a note in front of Trump with the news that a civilian had been shot outside the House chamber. “I just remember seeing it in front of him,” the valet said of the a note Trump had as he watched the insurrection on television. “I don’t remember how it got there or whatever,” the valet said. “But there was no, like, reaction.”

NOT SO GREAT ESCAPE: Authorities in Idaho have caught up with an Idaho prison inmate and an accomplice who engineered a daring escape that included a the wounding of three guards. They were caught in twin Falls, about two hours from Boise where the incident happened at a local hospital.

  The inmate, a white supremacist with distinctive body and facial tattoos named Skylar Meade, had cut his own face and was taken to the hospital. When he was being released to return to prison, the accomplice identified as Nicholas Umphenour fired on officers, wounding two of them, and drove away with Meade. The operation was clearly planned.

  A third prison guard was wounded by police thinking he was a gunman.

  During their hunt yesterday, authorities came across two dead bodies in neighboring counties that they suspect are connected to the escape. 

THE OBIT PAGE: M. Emmet Walsh, the paunchy character actor with a lazy drawl described by movie critic Roger Ebert as “the poet of sleaze,” died in northern Vermont at age 88.

  As a slimy and murdering detective in the 1984 “Blood Simple,” Walsh delivers the line, “Gimme a call whenever you wanna cut off my head. I can always crawl around without it.”

  Ebert created what he called the Stanton-Walsh Rule that “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”

THE SPIN RACK: Hundreds of Americans trapped in gang-ravaged Haiti are still trying to get out of the country. — President Biden announced another round of student loans being forgiven, a total of $5.8 billion for nearly 78,000 public-sector workers. — New Jersey’s indicted Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez announced that he will not run for re-election in his party’s primary this June. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Scientists have named a recently identified salamander-like species that crawled in Texas 270 million years ago after a famous frog who never existed at all. They named the ancient Kermitops gratus in honor of Kermit the Frog.

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