Attorney Arun Subramanian has become the first Indian American to become the Judge of the Manhattan Federal District Court of New York. Taking to Twitter, Senate Judiciary Committee said that Mr Subramanian has been directly engaged in every aspect of civil litigation and has clerked at every level of the federal judiciary.

“Arun Subramanian to the Southern District of New York. He’s been directly engaged in every aspect of civil litigation and has clerked at every level of the federal judiciary. He is also the first South Asian judge to serve on this bench,” the Committee tweeted.

Earlier, in September 2022, US President Joe Biden announced the nomination of Mr Subramanian for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

President Biden’s announcement brought the count of announced federal judicial nominees to 143 as this is Biden’s 26th round of nominees for the judicial positions and his thirteenth slate of nominations in 2022, according to an official statement by the White House.

Mr Subramanian received his Juris Doctor (J.D) from Columbia Law School in 2004 and his BA from Case Western Reserve University in 2001, the statement added.

He is a partner at Susman Godfrey LLP in New York where he has worked since 2007.

In his career, Mr Subramanian has successfully redeemed over a billion dollars for public and private entities that were the victims of fraud and other illegal conduct.

Moreover, Mr Subramanian served as a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court of the United States from 2006 to 2007, Judge Gerard E Lynch on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2005 to 2006, and Judge Dennis Jacobs on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2004 to 2005, as per the official website of Susman Godfrey.

The Indian-origin attorney has taken up the cause of public entities in False Claims Act cases, victims of trafficking in child pornography, consumers and individuals injured by unfair means.

Notably, he also contributes to the legal community by taking on pro bono cases outside of the courtroom and has served for years on the pro bono panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the second circuit.

Arun Subramanian currently serves as Chairperson of Susman Godfrey’s 2022 Pro Bono Committee and is also a longtime Director of the Columbia Law Review, one of the Nation’s pre-eminent legal journals, the official website of Susman Godfrey stated.

Three secular religions — race, sex and climate — have put the United States in a choke hole today, GOP presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy has told his fellow conservative Republicans and proposed ideas of dismantling the Department of Education along with the FBI and banning American companies doing business with China if he is elected as the president of the country in 2024.

“The Declaration of Independence of today is our declaration of independence from China. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, that is the Declaration of Independence he would sign. That is the Declaration of Independence I will sign if I am elected as your next president,” Mr Ramaswamy, 37, said in his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — the top annual event of the Republican Party and its support base.

In his first major address from a national stage of the CPAC, Mr Ramaswamy, who announced his decision to enter the 2024 race to the White House last week, noted that he is inspired by former president Donald Trump, 76, and his “America first” vision. It is time to identify the issues and work aggressively towards them, he observed.

In his 18-minute speech, Mr Ramaswamy said “three secular religions have America in a choke hole today”.

The first of them is this “woke racial religion” that says someone’s identity is based on his skin colour. “That if you are black, you are inherently disadvantaged. That if you are white, you are inherently privileged no matter your economic background or your upbringing. That your race determines who you are and what you can achieve in life,” he said.

This has created “this new culture of fear in America”, combining with the “second secular religion” that says the “sex of the person you are attracted to has to be hardwired on the day you were born” but your own biological sex is completely fluid over the course of your lifetime”.

“It makes no sense unless it is a religion. It does not match up to reason, it matches up to religion. And then it makes the same move as the first religion,” Mr Ramaswamy said.

The third one is the climate religion in America that says that “we have to fight carbon emissions at all costs in the United States while we shift those same carbon emissions to places like China that supposedly, even if you believe in this religion, you would have embraced nuclear energy, which is the best form of carbon-free energy production known to mankind”.

“And yet these people oppose nuclear energy. What is really going on is that the climate religion has about as much to do with the climate as the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Christ, which is to say nothing at all. It is about power, dominion, control, punishment and apologising for what we have achieved in this country and the modern West as we know it,” Mr Ramaswamy said amidst applause from the audience.

The US, he said, is in the middle of a national identity crisis.

“Take it from me. I am 37 years old. I am a millennial. I was born in 1985. I will tell you this, my generation, really every generation of Americans today, we are so hungry for a cause. We are hungry for purpose and meaning and identity at a point in our national history when the things that used to fill our hunger for purpose, faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared,” he said.

“We are hungry to be part of something bigger than ourselves, yet we cannot even answer the question of what it means to be an American today. This is an opportunity for the GOP. This is an opportunity for the conservative movement to rise to the occasion and fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes this woke poison to irrelevance,” he said.

Mr Ramaswamy said he is all in on the “America first” agenda. “Believe me, I am an America first conservative. I will not apologise for it. But to put America first, we now need to rediscover what America is. And that is why last week I announced my run for US president to deliver a national identity that we are missing in this country,” he said.

“This means that you believe in merit, that you get ahead in this country, not on the colour of your skin, but on the content of your character and your contributions. And that is why as the US president, I have pledged to get rid of affirmative action in this country once and for all. It is a national cancer on our soul,” he said.

The Indian American said he would ban US companies from doing business in China.

“I think it is important to be honest. If we want to declare independence from China, that means we got to be willing to ban most US businesses from doing business in China until the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) falls or until the CCP radically reforms itself. Because there is no easy way out other than taking that band-aid and ripping it right off,” he said.

“I am sorry Henry Kissinger. We are done with your experiment. In America, it is the only way out. We got to start thinking on the time scales of history, not the time scales of electoral cycles. We do not need Chamberlain, we need a little bit of Churchill in this country. If you are willing to make a sacrifice, the chances are you will never have to make it because the other side will fall first,” he asserted.

In his speech, Mr Ramaswamy also called for dismantling the Department of Education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“I have already said last week, the first agency we will shut down and need to shut down in the United States is the US Department of Education. It has no reason to exist. Never should have existed.

“And today, I am ready to announce the second government agency that I will shut down in this country we should have done at least 60 years ago. It has hurt Republicans and Democrats alike. We are going to get it done as finally, it is time to shut down the FBI in America and create something new to take its place because we are done with the J Edgar Hoover legacy to let this be a self-governing nation again,” he said.

Tejal Mehta, an Indian-American woman judge who promised to make a real impact to the community and treat people with compassion, has taken oath as the first justice of a district court in the US state of Massachusetts.

She will serve as the first justice of the Ayer District Court. Her swearing-in took place on Thursday.

She has served as an associate justice with the same court and was unanimously selected and sworn in by Judge Stacey Fortes, chief justice of the District Court, on March 2, the Lowell Sun newspaper reported.

“I’m confident that with her leadership … that the best is yet to come for the Ayer District Court,” said Fortes, chief justice of the District Court, who selected Mehta for the position and swore her in during the ceremony.

“As a lawyer, you can help people, but you can only help them to a point,” Mehta said, adding that “As a judge, you can do so much more and get to the root of issues and talk to people in such a way that really gets through to them.” “I have seen the same hopes and despairs in every court I have sat in as a travelling judge,” Mehta, who started her career in civil work, said.

“But when you are the first justice, then you can really get to know the community and make a real impact.” Judge Margaret Guzman, who has served as the first justice of the Ayer District Court for five years, praised the selection of Mehta as the court’s first justice, describing her as someone “who will preserve the pattern of treating people fairly.” “She makes very hard decisions that have to be made,” Guzman said.

“She doesn’t ridicule anybody, she’s thoughtful, she tells people what her decisions are about. She’s what you want a judge to be. To make the right decisions, but to do it in a way that when a person leaves, they don’t have to like what happened, but at least they understand what happened,” the report added.

Among those in attendance were several members of Mehta’s family, including her 14-year-old daughter, Mena Sheth, who is one of the three children shared by Mehta and her husband, Ketan Sheth, the report said. Mena, who was among the ceremony speakers, quoted US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) when discussing her mother.

“RBG said, ‘Fight for things you care about but do so in a way that will lead others to join you,’” Mena said.

“My mom is the exact embodiment of this quote. Through her kindness and outgoing personality, she encourages people to share her understanding of the world. Being a judge has given her the ability to see and do what’s best and I can’t think of anyone better to have that responsibility.” Mehta, a resident of Concord, started her career in civil work, before becoming a prosecutor with the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, where she served for more than a decade.

She went on to open her own practice, becoming a public defender, before pursuing a position on the bench as a circuit judge.

Mehta’s goal to focus on one place and to become the first justice of the Ayer District Court rested in a desire to make a positive impact on the community she has grown close to.

Dr Sonya Christian, a distinguished academic leader, has become the first person of South Asian heritage to be appointed as the permanent chancellor of California community colleges which is the largest and most diverse system of public higher education in the US.

The California Community Colleges is the largest system of higher education in the nation, composed of 73 districts and 116 colleges.

Christian, who is the 11th permanent chancellor of the college system was unanimously selected by the California Community Colleges Board of Governors on February 23, an official release said.

She received her bachelor of science degree from the University of Kerala.

For more than 30 years, Christian has actively engaged in policies and practices related to state and national completion, quality and equity agendas, it said.

In July 2021, Christian was named the sixth chancellor of the Kern Community College District, where she implemented a call to action with a focus on advancing student success and closing achievement and equity gaps, the release said.

“On behalf of the 1.8 million students of the California Community Colleges, our faculty, staff and the Board of Governors, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Sonya Christian as the newest chancellor,” said Board of Governor’s President Amy M Costa.

“Dr. Christian is one of our nation’s most dynamic college leaders, with a demonstrated record of collaboration and results in the Central Valley,” said Governor Gavin Newsom.

“I am honoured to be selected to lead the most important system of higher education in the country and grateful to the Board of Governors for their confidence,” Christian said.

“We continue to face many challenges, but I truly believe our greatest challenges enable us to do our greatest work. We are called to design the most vibrant, resilient, and effective learning environment ever. We are called to do this work at scale, not eventually, but now. And we will work with a shared vision that keeps students first,” she said.

Christian started her career in higher education as a mathematics faculty and later as division chair, then dean of science, engineering, allied health and mathematics at Bakersfield College, California.