WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday kept on hold President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship but agreed to hear arguments on the issue in May.

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Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship for the children of people who are in the U.S. illegally has been halted nationwide by three district courts around the country.

The Republican administration had sought to narrow those orders to allow for the policy to take effect in parts or most of the country while court challenges play out. That is expected to be the focus of the high court arguments.

British saxophonist Jess Gillam lit up the Ordway Concert Hall this week, in the first saxophone recital presented by the Schubert Club’s “International Artist Series.”

Performing with pianist Thomas Weaver, Gillam played with effervescent sparkle, shining a light on the versatility of the saxophone. While it’s most often associated with jazz and other popular music forms, Gillam made the case for the saxophone’s place in the classical music realm, and celebrated the instrument in an expansive program that gave a taste of just what the saxophone can do.

The 26-year-old classically-trained musician and BBC radio broadcaster started playing the sax when she was 7 in a carnival band, and toured around the UK making music in the streets. Her early years blended playing music and dancing at the same time, an impulse she carries with her today with her free-flowing, physical style. Her royal blue pantsuit and glittery shoes only added to the party feeling.

The concert included a number of works composed for other instruments before saxophones were invented in 1840. John Dowland’s “Flow My Tears,” a piece written for lute in 1600, became a gentle, whispering opener to the concert, as an example.

Georg Philipp Telemann, meanwhile, wrote Sonata in F Minor for bassoon and continuo in the 18th century, with an option to play the solo part two octaves higher on the recorder. Gillam played the part on soprano sax, accompanied by Weaver in Simon Parkin’s arrangement. The music showcased Gillam’s lovely tone as well as her sprightly articulation.

She played transposed oboe works from the 20th century on the soprano saxophone as well. Francis Poulenc’s Oboe Sonata, arranged by John Harle, was complex and dramatic, with unusual twists that highlighted the saxophone’s squeaky nature in all its idiosyncratic glory. Gillam and Weaver played a wonderful back and forth in the music, trading off melodies seamlessly. The work’s third movement, “Déploration,” is its smoothest, and Gillam brought a powerful emotion to the movement.

Benjamin Britten’s “Temporal Variations,” meanwhile, which Gillam arranged herself, also celebrated the weirdness of the saxophone’s at times harsh sound. In frantic, pulsing sections, Gillam kept up a frenetic energy and caused gasps in the audience with the work’s haunting last sustained note.

Gillam divided the concert into two parts, focusing on classical repertoire for the first half, and playing her soprano saxophone. After intermission, she alternated soprano and alto sax, and paid tribute to the “greats” of saxophone music, including her own mentors as well as musicians who inspired her.

“Pequena Cazardas,” by Pedro Iturralde and arranged by Gillam with John Harle, was one of the evening’s most exciting. When she really got going, Gillam donned a confident smirk — aware of how much she had the audience in her grasp. Gillam isn’t just a terrific musician, but she’s also got magnetic stage presence that has real star quality.

“Petite Fleur” by Sidney Bechet was another hit, swelling with luxurious warmth. Meanwhile, Stan Getz’ “The Peacocks,” and Philip Woods Sonata for Alto Saxophone filtered in a film noir feeling.

Gillam and Weaver finished their set performing “Rant,” a piece written for Gillam by her teacher and mentor John Harle. The work draws on colloquial music styles from Northern England, where Gillam is from. With its danceable rhythms, the work was a swirling triumph, after which the audience demanded, and got, an encore.

The concert marked the last offering in Schubert Club’s International Artist Series this season, but there are still more performances in Schubert’s other programs, like free “Courtroom Concerts” at the Landmark Center, its Music in the Parks series, and more.

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By RUSS BYNUM

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Georgia’s highest court waded Wednesday into a fight between Black landowners and local officials who have weakened long-standing protections for one of the South’s last Gullah-Geechee communities founded by freed slaves.

Residents of largely unspoiled Sapelo Island have been trying to roll back zoning changes imposed by McIntosh County officials that doubled the size of homes allowed in a tiny enclave called Hogg Hummock. Homeowners fear the change will bring unaffordable tax increases, threatening one of America’s most historically and culturally unique Black communities.

The Georgia Supreme Court heard legal arguments Wednesday on whether residents can attempt to repeal the 2023 zoning amendments by forcing a special election.

Hogg Hummock residents and their supporters last year gathered more than 2,300 petition signatures from registered voters seeking a referendum in the coastal county 60 miles (96 kilometers) south of Savannah.

McIntosh County commissioners sued to stop the referendum. A lower court judge canceled voting less than a week before the election, ruling it was illegal after hundreds had already cast ballots early.

Philip Thompson, an attorney for the Hogg Hummock residents, urged the state Supreme Court to declare that they have a “constitutional right to a referendum” on the zoning changes so that they can defend a place that’s “a cultural and historical treasure.”

McIntosh County’s attorney, Ken Jarrard, argued that zoning powers “are absolutely different” from others granted to county governments by Georgia’s constitution, and therefore aren’t subject to being challenged by referendum.

Roughly 30 to 50 Black residents live in Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, a community of dirt roads and modest homes founded by their enslaved ancestors who worked the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding.

It’s among a dwindling number of small communities started by emancipated island slaves — known collectively as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia — scattered along the coast from North Carolina to Florida. Scholars say their separation from the mainland caused these communities to retain much of their African heritage, from their unique dialect to skills and crafts such as cast-net fishing and weaving baskets.

Hogg Hummock earned a place in 1996 on the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of treasured U.S. historic sites. But for protections to preserve the community, residents depend on the local government in McIntosh County, where 65% of the 11,100 residents are white.

Hogg Hummock landowners said they were blindsided in the fall of 2023 when county commissioners voted to relax zoning restrictions enacted decades earlier to help shield the community’s Black residents from pressure to sell land held by their families for generations.

Attorneys for McIntosh County say the residents’ concerns are overblown, arguing in one court filing that allowing larger homes in their community is so “unremarkable” that it “borders on banal.”

The issues before the Georgia Supreme Court have nothing to do with whether Hogg Hummock deserves special protections. Instead, the justices are being asked to deal with technicalities over whether local zoning laws can be challenged by referendum and whether McIntosh County commissioners had a right to sue to stop the October vote.

The case follows a 2023 ruling by the Georgia justices that upheld a referendum that blocked coastal Camden County from building a launchpad for commercial rockets. The court ruled that a rarely used provision of Georgia’s constitution empowers citizens to veto county government decisions at the ballot box.

That decision emboldened Hogg Hummock residents to pursue their own referendum to overturn McIntosh County’s zoning changes.

But attorneys for the county commissioners have argued the constitutional provision allowing citizen referendums doesn’t apply to local zoning decisions, because zoning powers are addressed in a separate section of the state constitution. They also say the trial court judge was wrong to put the zoning changes on hold pending a ruling by state Supreme Court, which could take six months.

Lawyers for the Hogg Hummock residents say the referendum shouldn’t have been interrupted and that county commissioners had no legal standing to sue to stop it, citing the high court’s ruling in the spaceport case.

The Supreme Court is weighing the Sapelo Island case as residents recover from an unrelated tragedy.

Hundreds of tourists were visiting the island on Oct. 19 when a walkway collapsed at the state-operated ferry dock, killing seven people. It happened as Hogg Hummock was celebrating its annual Cultural Day festival, a day intended to be a joyful respite from worries about the community’s uncertain future.