Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz isn't going to lie, he told Megyn Kelly on Tuesday's Kelly File. Ted Cruz "was one of the best students I ever had, because a teachers loves to be challenged," he said. Dershowitz uses the Socratic method, he said, and "everything I said, he disagreed with.... And he made such brilliant arguments that I never had to play the devil's advocate." Dershowitz, whose views skew liberal, said he knew Cruz's politics were the opposite, but they were also "clear, principled, unwavering, and very intelligently presented."

Kelly asked if it's true that Cruz was one of his smartest students ever, and Dershowitz said yes. "And in fact, I got a lot of criticism from my friends on the left, saying, 'Why are you saying that?'" he added. "I'm a professor. I have to tell the truth about my students, even if I disagree with their views, even if I'm not going to vote for him." Watch one of the oddest academic performance evaluations ever below. Peter Weber

The "news reports" section of the White House's official newsletter, the 1600 Daily, was looking a little sparse Friday aside from an enthusiastic Washington Post headline, "Trump's budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why." Which sounds great in theory, except if the newsletters' authors had read past the headline, they would have realized Post writer Alexandra Petri's opinion piece is a scathingly sarcastic takedown of President Trump's proposed budget.

"Some people are complaining that the budget proffered by the Trump administration, despite its wonderful macho-sounding name, is too vague and makes all sorts of cuts to needed programs in favor of increasing military spending by leaps and bounds," Petri writes. "These people are wimps." This is literally the first sentence of the article.

(A screenshot of Friday's 1600 Daily email)

Here's a little more:

This budget will make America a lean, mean fighting machine with bulging, rippling muscles and not an ounce of fat. America has been weak and soft for too long. BUT HOW WILL I SURVIVE ON THIS BUDGET? you may be wondering. I AM A HUMAN CHILD, NOT A COSTLY FIGHTER JET. You may not survive, but that is because you are SOFT and WEAK, something this budget is designed to eliminate. [The Washington Post]

Petri goes on to list departments worth cutting, such as the Agriculture Department — "NO MORE OF THIS NAMBY-PAMBY 'GATHERING' NONSENSE. We will be HUNTERS again" — and the National Endowment for the Arts, which she proposes be replaced with "an armored helicopter with a shark painted on it."

Petri concludes:

AMERICA WILL BE STRONGER THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN! Anyone who survives will be a gun covered in the fur of a rare mammal, capable of fighting disease with a single muscular flex. RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW!

It will be great. [The Washington Post]

In addition to the Post's glowing endorsement, the only other "news reports" item the White House linked to Friday was "Trump praises Irish 'fight' at White House ceremony." Jeva Lange

There will be three new tokens on the board in the next edition of Monopoly. After surveying more than 4.3 million Monopoly fans from around the world, Hasbro announced Friday that a penguin, a rubber ducky, and a T. rex were the three lucky tokens chosen to be part of the newest version of the classic board game due out this fall. The tokens will replace the boot, the thimble, and the wheelbarrow.

"While I'm sad to see the iconic thimble, boot, and wheelbarrow tokens go, it will be fun to have some new, fan-sourced tokens in the mix," said Jonathan Berkowitz, Hasbro's senior vice president of marketing. "Personally, I've always especially liked the boot token, but I'm excited to move onto the T. rex."

For anyone not taking the news as well as Berkowitz, take solace in the fact it could've been worse. Game tokens included in the survey that didn't make the cut include a smiley-face emoji, a monster truck, aviator sunglasses, a pair of bunny slippers, and a cell phone.

Since Hasbro nixed the iron back in 2013, that makes the top hat and the racecar the only tokens from the original 1935 edition that will still be in play in the upcoming version. Rounding out the tokens for the new edition are the battleship, the cat, and the Scottie dog. Becca Stanek

A majority of Americans don't support President Trump's hard line stances on immigration, a CNN/ORC poll released Friday revealed. While Trump has pledged to build a multi-billion dollar U.S.-Mexico border wall and strictly enforce U.S. immigration laws, nearly two-thirds of Americans say the nation's top priority should be offering undocumented immigrants a path to legal citizenship. Just 26 percent say stopping illegal border crossings should be a top priority, while 13 percent say the main concern should be deporting undocumented immigrants.

A notable 90 percent of Americans support offering undocumented immigrants who "hold a job, speak English, and are willing to pay back taxes" a path to legal citizenship, CNN reported. The idea garnered almost equal support from both sides of the aisle, with 96 percent of Democrats, 89 percent of Independents, and 87 percent of Republicans backing it. Though Trump has floated the idea of an immigration reform compromise, he has offered few details.

The poll, which surveyed 1,025 Americans by phone, was taken from March 1 to 4. Its overall margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Becca Stanek

You could spend a lifetime looking for diamonds at Arkansas' Crater of Diamonds State Park, but it only took 14-year-old Kalel Langford about 30 minutes on Saturday to find a real keeper, USA Today reports. "Its color was so dark that we weren't sure if it was a diamond, but we knew we needed to have it looked at," said Kalel's father, Craig Langford. It's a good thing they did — the dark-brown stone Kalel stumbled upon is a 7.44-carat diamond.

The diamond is described as being about the size of a pinto bean, and it is the seventh-largest stone to have been discovered at Crater of Diamonds since 1972. The park's largest diamond, discovered in 1978, weighs in at 8.61 carats.

Kalel named his diamond "Superman's Diamond" because, as his father noted, "When we chose to name [our son] Kalel, we didn't realize that [Kal-El] was also Superman's birth name."

Kalel found the precious gem in a southern portion of the park, in a stream. "Conditions were ideal for Kalel to find his diamond," said park interpreter Waymon Cox. "About an inch of rain fell on the plowed search area during the week. A heavy rain can uncover larger diamonds near the surface. Diamonds have a metallic-looking shine and are often easier to spot on top of the ground.”

Kalel is going to keep the diamond, he says. After all, it's a pretty nifty souvenir. Jeva Lange

Venezuela's economy is in a bad way, suffering from runaway inflation thanks to its government's currency manipulation as well as widespread shortages of food and other basic goods exacerbated by government corruption. Among the dwindling commodities is bread, and the Venezuelan government has responded by arresting bakers it says are waging an "economic war" on their own country.

As the Miami Herald reports, the socialist regime has arrested at least four people and seized control of two bakeries. The bakers' crime? A statement from the government said they were "selling underweight bread and were using price-regulated flour to illegally make specialty items, like sweet rolls and croissants."

The policy response to the bread shortage is a ban on making anything other than French bread and white loaves using government-imported flour. (Venezuela's military controls its food supply and the country is heavily dependent on imports.) Some 90 percent of bread products are also subject to price controls.

Venezuela's government intends to continue surprise raids on bakeries to catch bakers it alleges are hoarding flour instead of making bread — even as lines of would-be customers snake out the bakery doors. "The bakeries are showing the authorities that they have no bread inventory," said Juan Crespo, president of Venezuela's Industrial Flour Union. "The government has to see the reality." Bonnie Kristian

A source at a telecom security firm contracting with the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed to CBS a report that it detected an unusual amount of suspicious cell tower activity affecting phones serviced by a "major" cell carrier in the vicinity of the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

DHS has not commented on the suspicious activity, but the source at ESD America, the security contractor, said the activity was first observed in January. It could indicate surveillance, possibly controlled by a foreign entity and potentially targeting specific lawmakers or officials given the geographic range.

"Mass amounts of location data appear to have been siphoned off by a third party who may have control of entire cell phone towers in the area," The Washington Free Beacon reported in its story breaking the news. "Such a tactic could be used to clone phones, introduce malware to facilitate spying, and track government phones." Bonnie Kristian

More than 80 percent of the largest nonprofit patient advocacy groups accept funding from drug and medical device companies, according to The New England Journal of Medicine. Industry executives sit on the governing boards of nearly 40 percent of the 104 top patient groups, and for some of them, industry donations make up more than half their annual income.

"Patient groups said they have taken steps in recent years to improve their financial disclosures and conflict-of-interest policies, and rejected the suggestion that they were influenced by their corporate donors," The New York Times reports. On the other hand, the president of the National Psoriasis Foundation said advocacy organizations like his and pharmaceutical companies don't necessarily have a conflict of interest because they're both "seeking to help serve the patient."

The study authors called these patient groups' transparency efforts "pathetic." As a possible remedy, they suggest drug and device companies themselves should report how much they donate to patient groups, just as they do with doctors. The Week Staff