The Mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, wants to terminate a lease and cut financial support for an independent film theater that screened an Oscar-winning documentary about the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

Mayor Steven Meiner introduced a resolution describing the film “No Other Land” as antisemitic. City commissioners will discuss the resolution Wednesday during their next meeting.

“No Other Land” opened last Friday at O Cinema, located at the Miami Beach Historic City Hall. Meiner had reached out several days before the premiere to discourage O Cinema CEO Vivian Marthell from showing the film.

“The City of Miami Beach has one of the highest concentrations of Jewish residents in the United States,” Meiner said in his letter to Marthell. “The ‘No Other Land’ film is a one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents.”

Marthell initially agreed not to screen the movie in a response to Meiner, but the showing went on as scheduled.

“My initial reaction to Mayor Meiner’s threats was made under duress,” Marthell said in an email Thursday. “After reflecting on the broader implications for free speech and O Cinema’s mission, I (along with the O Cinema board and staff members) agreed it was critical to screen this acclaimed film.”

O Cinema has always been committed to sharing films that not only entertain, but also challenge, educate and inspire meaningful dialogue, Marthell said.

“We understand the power of cinema to tell stories that matter, and we recognize that some stories — especially those rooted in real-world conflicts — can evoke strong feelings and passionate reactions. As they should,” Marthell said. “Our decision to screen ‘No Other Land’ is not a declaration of political alignment. It is a bold reaffirmation of our fundamental belief that every voice deserves to be heard.”

In December and January, the city of Miami Beach executed two grants worth about $80,000 for O Cinema, according to the mayor’s proposed resolution. About half the money has already been paid, but the resolution would stop the rest. The city began leasing space to O Cinema in 2019 with the ability to terminate the contract with 180 days of notice, which is what Meiner is seeking to do.

“No Other Land,” which was shot between 2019 and 2023 and released last year, was directed by a group of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

“When the Mayor uses the word antisemitism to silence Palestinians and Israelis who proudly oppose occupation and apartheid together, fighting for justice and equality, he is emptying it out of meaning,” Abraham said in an email. “I find that to be very dangerous.”

The film documents the destruction of Palestinian villages in the West Bank by the Israeli military. It won the Academy Award for best documentary feature as well as earlier awards.

While the film has earned wide praise from film critics, it has also drawn controversy.

“Freedom of expression is an important value, but defamation of Israel into a tool for international promotion is not art,” Israeli culture minister Miki Zohar said in a social media post.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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Federal immigration authorities arrested a second person who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, and have revoked the visa of another student, they announced Friday.

Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was arrested by immigration officers for overstaying her student visa, the Department of Homeland Security said. Kordia’s visa was terminated in January 2022 for “lack of attendance,” the department said. She was previously arrested for her involvement in protests at Columbia in April 2024, the agency added.

The Trump administration also revoked the visa of Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian citizen and doctoral student at Columbia University, for allegedly “advocating for violence and terrorism.” Srinivasan opted to “self-deport” Tuesday, five days after her visa was revoked, the department said.

Officials didn’t immediately say what evidence they had that Srinivasan had advocated violence. In recent days, Trump administration officials have used those terms to describe people who criticized Israel’s military action in Gaza.

Columbia University’s campus has been thrust into chaos following the arrest Sunday of Mahmoud Khalil, a well-known Palestinian activist who helped lead last Spring’s protests. On Thursday, ICE agents also visited the university-owned residences of two other students at Columbia University, but did not make any arrests.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the Trump administration is expecting to revoke more student visas in the coming days.

Speaking Friday after the Group of Seven foreign ministers meeting in Canada, Rubio said that the administration would keep looking for people with student visas whom they wouldn’t have let into the country “had we known they were going to do what they’ve done.”

“But now that they’ve done it, we’re going to get rid of them,” he said.

Khalil was rushed from New York to Louisiana last weekend in a manner that left the outspoken Columbia University graduate student feeling like he was being kidnapped, his lawyers wrote in an updated lawsuit seeking his immediate release.

The lawyers described in detail what happened to Khalil as he was flown to Louisiana by agents who he said never identified themselves. Once there, he was left to sleep in a bunker with no pillow or blanket, the lawyers said. Top U.S. officials cheered the effort to deport a man his lawyers say sometimes became the “public face” of student protests on Columbia’s campus against Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

The filing late Thursday in Manhattan federal court was the result of a federal judge’s Wednesday order that they finally be allowed to speak with Khalil.

The lawyers said his treatment by federal authorities from Saturday, when he was first arrested, to Monday reminded Khalil of when he left Syria shortly after the forced disappearance of his friends there during a period of arbitrary detention in 2013.

“Throughout this process, Mr. Khalil felt as though he was being kidnapped,” the lawyers wrote of his treatment.

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump heralded Khalil’s arrest as the first “of many to come,” vowing on social media to deport students he said engage in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

In court papers, lawyers for the Justice Department said Kahlil was detained under a law allowing Rubio to remove someone from the country if he has reasonable grounds to believe their presence or activities would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.

Trump and Rubio were added as defendants in the lawsuit seeking to free Khalil.

The government attorneys asked a judge to toss out the lawsuit or transfer it to New Jersey or Louisiana, saying jurisdiction belongs in the locations where Khalil has been held since his detention.

According to the lawsuit, Khalil repeatedly asked to speak to a lawyer after the U.S. permanent resident with no criminal history was snatched by federal agents as he and his wife were returning to Columbia’s residential housing, where they lived, after dinner at a friend’s home.

Confronted by agents for the Department of Homeland Security, Khalil briefly telephoned his lawyer before he was taken to FBI headquarters in lower Manhattan, the lawsuit said.

It was there that Khalil saw an agent approach another agent and say, “the White House is requesting an update,” the lawyers wrote.

At some point early Sunday, Khalil was taken, handcuffed and shackled, to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a privately-run facility where he spent the night in a cold waiting room for processing, his request for a blanket denied, the lawsuit said.

When he reached the front of the line for processing, he was told his processing would not occur after all because he was being transported by immigration authorities, it said.

Put in a van, Khalil noticed that one of the agents received a text message instructing that Khalil was not to use his phone, the lawsuit said.

At 2:45 p.m. Sunday, he was put on an American Airlines flight from Kennedy International Airport to Dallas, where he was put on a second flight to Alexandria, Louisiana. He arrived at 1 a.m. Monday and a police car took him to the Louisiana Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, it said.

At the facility, he now worries about his pregnant wife and is “also very concerned about missing the birth of his first child,” the lawsuit said.

In April, Khalil was to begin a job and receive health benefits that the couple was counting on to cover costs related to the birth and care of the child, it added.

“It is very important to Mr. Khalil to be able to continue his protected political speech, advocating and protesting for the rights of Palestinians — both domestically and abroad,” the lawsuit said, noting that Khalil was planning to speak on a panel at the upcoming premiere in Copenhagen, Denmark, of a documentary in which he is featured.

At a hearing Wednesday, Khalil’s attorneys said they had not been allowed any attorney-client-protected communications with Khalil since his arrest and had been told they could speak to him in 10 days. Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered that at least one conversation be permitted on Wednesday and Thursday.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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In a state so often bitterly divided along partisan lines, Democrats and Republicans alike were moved to tears as they gathered in Florida’s capitol on Thursday to honor the life and legacy of Democratic state Sen. Geraldine Thompson, a longtime legislator, civil rights legend and educator who died on Feb. 13 at the age of 76, following complications from knee-replacement surgery.

Thompson’s husband and family members sat at her desk on the Senate floor, which was adorned with a bouquet of white roses and a black cloth, as her colleagues prayed, sang and shared their remembrances.

A champion of voting rights and Black history, Thompson’s tenure in the capitol began as a staffer for the first Black woman elected to the Florida Legislature, Gwen Cherry, before Thompson went on to her own terms of service in the House and Senate, where she represented central Florida for more than 15 years.

She went toe-to-toe with Republican leaders to oppose what she saw as unconstitutional gerrymandering of voting districts and to defend the state’s Black history, at a time when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has worked to restrict how the darkest chapters of the state’s story can be told in Florida classrooms.

Speaking at Thursday’s memorial service, Democratic state Sen. Darryl Rouson said Thompson “epitomized Black history.”

“I’m reminded of the African proverb that says, ‘when an elder dies, a library is burned to the ground.’ We’ve lost one of our premier and prestigious libraries with the passing of Senator Thompson,” Rouson said.

In a condolence letter written to Thompson’s family and read by Democratic state Sen. Tracie Davis, former President Barack Obama called Thompson “a model of the best kind of public service” whose “trailblazing legacy” will live on through the many lives she touched.

Democratic state Sen. Rosalind Osgood first saw the late lawmaker in action in the Capitol back in 2000, long before Osgood herself was elected to the legislature. For Osgood, Thompson was living proof that Black women belong in the state’s halls of power.

“Just seeing these Black women legislate,” Osgood said, “it was mesmerizing.”

A beloved leader of the state’s Legislative Black Caucus, Thompson is remembered as the conscience of the Florida Senate and a “living history lesson,” someone who was deeply respected by her fellow lawmakers and the rare figure who could command her colleagues’ full attention when she took to her feet to speak on the chamber floor.

“You know that when you’re debating, everybody might not be listening,” Republican state Sen. Ed Hooper said, “except when Geraldine spoke.”

A public school teacher, community college administrator and historian, Thompson also founded the Wells’Built Museum of African American History and Culture in Orlando and served as chair of the task force charged with building a state museum of African American history.

She was known for donning the costumes of Black trailblazers in Florida history and giving portrayals of them on the Senate floor that her colleagues called “mesmerizing.”

Speaking at Thursday’s memorial service, Republican state Sen. Don Gaetz recalled racing out of a meeting with the then-House Speaker to witness Thompson bringing to life the story of pioneering Black female aviator Bessie Coleman.

“I didn’t know the story. I didn’t know it until she told it in the first person,” Gaetz said. “And I can tell you that I believed that Geraldine Thompson could fly. And I still do.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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