Trump administration asks Supreme Court to partly allow birthright citizenship restrictions

 Attorneys for the Trump administration are pleading with the Supreme Court to halt three lower court injunctions scuttling the president’s executive order to effectively end birthright citizenship. 

In a series of emergency filings on Thursday, the Trump administration argued that lower courts exceeded their powers by imposing overly broad injunctions on his order to claw back the longstanding US policy of granting citizenship to people born in the country. 

“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current Administration,” the lawyers wrote in the filing. “Members of this Court have long recognized the need to settle the lawfulness of universal injunctions.”

The US Supreme CourtBloomberg via Getty Images

“At a minimum, this Court should stay all three pre-liminary injunctions to the extent they prohibit executive agencies from developing and issuing guidance explaining how they would implement the Citizenship Order in the event that it takes effect.”

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Judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington State had imposed injunctions blocking President Trump from carrying out his executive order to end birthright citizenship while legal challenges against the order play out. A coalition of 22 states, seven plaintiffs, and two immigration groups challenged Trump’s executive order. 

Three federal appeals courts later slapped down requests from the Trump administration to intervene against those injunctions. 

“The government comes to this Court with a ‘modest’ request: while the parties litigate weighty merits questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purpor[t] to cover every person in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power,” Acting US Solicitor General Sarah Harris explained in the plea to the Supreme Court. 

So far, no lower court has backed Trump in upholding the legality of his Jan. 20 executive order to scrap birthright citizenship for individuals born after Feb. 19 to illegal immigrants. The order also restricts federal agencies from accepting or acknowledging the US citizenship of those children. 

Trump is banking on a novel legal theory to argue that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee to individuals “born or naturalized in the United States” does not apply to the brood of illegal immigrants.

Trump’s plan to curtail birthright citizenship will likely come down to the Supreme Court.Yuri Gripas – Pool via CNP / MEGA

The theory is that the 14th Amendment phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” means that the individuals have to be Americans and that illegal immigrants are subject to the jurisdiction of their country.  

During his first administration, Trump had railed against birthright citizenship but stopped short of mounting a legal challenge against it amid fears from lawyers that the effort wouldn’t be successful. But years later, the Supreme Court is comprised of six conservative appointed justices and the president is seemingly optimistic about its chances. 

Birthright citizenship had been the judicial branch’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment for over 150 years. In 1898, the Supreme Court backed up that interpretation of the 14th Amendment. 

The Supreme Court is expected to establish a briefing schedule on the matter within the coming days. There are at least 30 other countries that recognize birthright citizenship. 

This marks the first time that Trump’s challenge against birthright citizenship has reached the Supreme Court.

https://nypost.com/2025/03/13/us-news/trump-administration-asks-supreme-court-to-partly-allow-birthright-citizenship-restrictions/

NY Democrats want MORE crazy people left roaming the streets and subway

 New York’s Legislature this week a gave blatant middle-finger to Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and beleaguered city residents by rejecting a move to get the obviously, seriously, dangerously mentally ill off New York’s streets and subways.

Specifically, the state Senate and Assembly budget proposals omitted the gov’s push for the budget law to make it easier to involuntarily commit unwell, often violent people who are a risk to themselves or others.

The Senate even wants to make the problem worse, by tightening the rules.

Vague language in current law leaves health-care providers too timid in judging whether someone is in bad enough shape to be checked into a facility without their consent.

The outcome: Cases like Waldo Mejia, a maniac who showed signs of being a danger for years, including setting the lobby of his ex-girlfriend’s building on fire in 2019, before finally stabbing a 14-year-old boy to death in January.

Or Jamar Banks, who was free to stab two people on the subway system despite having 54 previous arrests and being flagged by cops as potentially suicidal and emotionally disturbed multiple times.

Hochul wants to expand the involuntary-commitment standard and give providers’ more clarity, which is the bare minimum to start getting dangerously unwell people off the street and into treatment.

Speaker Carl Heastie’s excuse for omitting Hochul’s proposal is his old claim that there should be “no policy in the budget” — a cowardly cop-out, since the budget is intrinsically all about policy choices.

But that’s less toxic than the Senate’s call to raise the standard for involuntary commitment to those who are presenting an “imminent risk of serious physical harm” to themselves or others “as manifested by homicidal or other violent behavior.”

That is: Do nothing until you can prove someone’s on the very brink of hurting or killing him/herself or others or has already attacked someone.

Mental-health care is a public good, a reality progressives heartily agree with as long as the topic is upwardly mobile millennials going to therapy.

But when it comes to serious mental illness — the screaming-on-the-street, shoving-folks-in-front-of-trains kind — suddenly progs think getting people the treatment they need is cruel and inhumane.

Next time you’re maneuvering around a dangerous-seeming loon, above or below ground, remember: The Democrats who run the Legislature think we need more such folks running free — guaranteeing even more maimings, killings and avoidable tragedies to come.

https://nypost.com/2025/03/13/opinion/democrats-plan-to-weaken-involuntary-commitment-is-pure-insanity/

AI leading to faster, cheaper oil production, executives say

 Artificial intelligence is speeding up oil and gas drilling and prompting companies to take a second look at places they had viewed as too difficult or expensive to develop, executives detailed during the CERAWeek conference in Houston.

AI took center stage in many sessions at the world's largest energy gathering. Oil producers are seeking ways to remain profitable in an environment of plummeting oil prices and worries that U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs could slow global energy demand.

UK oil major BP is using AI to steer drill bits and predict potential problems in wells before they happen, said Ann Davies, BP's senior vice president of wells.

"We are able to drill more wells per year and have a better capital allocation," she said.

BP announced last month it would boost annual spending on oil and gas production as part of a major strategy shift to improve investor confidence.

AI has helped U.S. oil producer Devon Energy drill in areas where it was unfeasible before, said chief technology officer Trey Lowe in an interview.

For example, the company can gather information about a fault in a formation, then drill on the other side to avoid it, he said.

Chevron is using AI-powered drones that fly over its shale operations in Texas and Colorado to remotely monitor potential problems like emissions leaks and alert field workers.

In three months of testing drones through a partnership with autonomous drone company Percepto, Chevron reduced the amount of time that production was shut in for repairs or maintenance, said Russell Robinson, a deputy program manager of facilities and operations at Chevron, in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.

The drones helped workers spend less time criss-crossing the shale field performing routine inspections, he said.

"We've continued to have more assets that are running at a longer time, so this is all around just producing more oil or gas," he said, adding Chevron is evaluating whether to expand use of drones to monitor its refineries.

Devon Energy has machine learning models monitoring each of its oil rigs across the U.S., Lowe said, adding the company has seen a 25% improvement in productive life of its oil and gas wells.

AI is also speeding up offshore drilling. BP is evaluating vast amounts of seismic data in the Gulf of Mexico in just eight to 12 weeks with the help of AI, versus six to 12 months previously. This helps geoscientists determine where to drill a well and predict difficulties, a spokesperson said.

While the oil and gas industry has used AI for years, recent advances like large-language models are revolutionizing the sector, said Chicheng Xu, founder of OpenPetro AI, a company building AI tools for the energy industry, and a former petrophysicist at Aramco.

For example, building three-dimensional visualizations of features deep beneath the ocean floor would be time-consuming for humans, he said.

"AI can dig through the data and find the features you want to see and visualize it to you. That's the real difference," Xu said.

Cutting time and costs means gaining a competitive advantage.

"Companies that don't deploy it (AI) will get left behind at this point," said Devon's Lowe.

https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2025-03-13/ai-leading-to-faster-cheaper-oil-production-executives-say

Columbia University punishes pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied building

 Columbia University on Thursday said it had doled out a range of punishments to students who occupied a campus building last spring during pro-Palestinian protests. 

The announcement came a week after President Donald Trump's administration announced that it had canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts in response to what it said was the Ivy League school's poor response to antisemitism on campus.

Columbia University's interim president, Katrina Armstrong, has called the administration's concerns legitimate and said her institution was working with the government to address them. Campus protests and pro-Israel counter-protests have drawn allegations of antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism.

The university said in a statement on Thursday that its "judicial board determined findings and issued sanctions to students ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall last spring."

The university did not release the names of students who were disciplined, nor did it say how many students faced punishments. 

Columbia was the epicenter of anti-Israel protests that hit several U.S. college campuses. 

The demonstrations began after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and subsequent U.S.-supported Israeli assault on Gaza. Protesters demanded that university endowments divest from Israeli interests and that the U.S. end military assistance to Israel, among other demands.     

The Trump administration has vowed a severe crackdown on what it labels as pro-Hamas protesters. 

Over the weekend federal immigration agents detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of last year's campus protests whom the administration seeks to deport. The administration has said that his detention was the first of many it hopes to carry out. Khalil's deportation has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-03-13/columbia-university-punishes-pro-palestinian-protesters-who-occupied-building

Johns Hopkins University slashes 2,000 jobs after Trump administration grant cut

 The Johns Hopkins University said on Thursday it will slash over 2,000 jobs in the U.S. and abroad after the administration of President Donald Trump terminated $800 million in grants to the renowned academic institution.

It marked the biggest layoff in the university's history and involved 247 domestic U.S. workers for the academic institution and another 1,975 positions outside the U.S. in 44 countries.

The job cuts impact the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school and affiliated non-profit for international health, Jhpiego.

"This is a difficult day for our entire community. The termination of more than $800 million in USAID funding is now forcing us to wind down critical work here in Baltimore and internationally," the university said in a statement shared with media.

Since taking office on January 20, Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk have attempted to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The Trump administration has canceled more than 80% of all the programs at USAID following a six-week review, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday.

In addition to attacks on the U.S. foreign aid agency, the Trump administration is also probing 60 American universities, including Hopkins, over pro-Palestinian protests on campuses.

The Trump administration alleges protesters are antisemitic. Demonstrators deny the allegations and say the U.S. government is conflating their criticism of U.S. ally Israel's military assault on Gaza with antisemitism.

Last week, the U.S. canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to New York's Columbia University.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2025-03-13/johns-hopkins-university-slashes-2-000-jobs-after-trump-administration-grant-cut