As Trevor Murphy pulls up to his dad’s 20-acre (8-hectare) grove in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, he points to the cookie-cutter, one-story homes encroaching on the orange trees from all sides.

“At some point, this isn’t going to be an orange grove anymore,” Murphy, a third-generation grower, says as he gazes at the rows of trees in Lake Wales, Florida. “You look around here, and it’s all houses, and that’s going to happen here.”

Polk County, which includes Lake Wales, contains more acres of citrus than any other county in Florida. And in 2023, more people moved to Polk County than any other county in the country.

Population growth, hurricanes and a vicious citrus greening disease have left the Florida orange industry reeling. Consumers are drinking less orange juice, citrus growers are folding up their operations in the state and the major juice company Tropicana is struggling to stay afloat. With huge numbers of people moving into Florida’s orange growing areas, developers are increasingly building homes on what were once orange groves.

Many growers are now making the difficult decision to sell orange groves that have been in their families for generations to developers building homes to house the growing population.

Others, like Murphy, are sticking it out, hoping to survive until a bug-free tree or other options arrive to repel the disease or treat the trees.

Mounting concerns

When Hurricane Irma blasted through the state’s orange belt in 2017, Florida’s signature crop already had been on a downward spiral for two decades because of the greening disease. Next came a major freeze and two more hurricanes in 2022, followed by two hurricanes last year. A tree that loses branches and foliage in a hurricane can take three years to recover, Murphy said.

Those catastrophes contributed to a 90% decline in orange production over the past two decades. Citrus groves in Florida, which covered more than 832,00 acres (336,698 hectares) at the turn of the century, populated scarcely 275,000 acres (111,288 hectares) last year, and California has eclipsed Florida as the nation’s leading citrus producer.

“Losing the citrus industry is not an option. This industry is … so ingrained in Florida. Citrus is synonymous with Florida,” Matt Joyner, CEO of trade association Florida Citrus Mutual told Florida lawmakers recently.

Nevertheless, Alico Inc., one of Florida’s biggest growers, announced this year that it plans to wind down its citrus operations on more than 53,000 acres (21,000 hectares), saying its production has declined by almost three-quarters in a decade.

That decision hurts processors, including Tropicana, which rely on Alico’s fruit to produce orange juice and must now operate at reduced capacity. Orange juice consumption in the U.S. has been declining for the past two decades, despite a small bump during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A prominent growers group, the Gulf Citrus Growers Association, closed its doors last year.

Location, location, location

Pressure on citrus farming is also growing from one of the state’s other biggest industries: real estate.

Florida expanded by more than 467,000 people last year to 23 million people, making it the third largest state in the nation. And more homes must be built to house that ever-growing population.

Some prominent, multigenerational citrus families each have been putting hundreds of acres (hectares) of groves up for sale for millions of dollars, or as much as $25,000 an acre.

Murphy owns several hundred acres (hectares) of groves and says he has no plans to abandon the industry, though last year he closed a citrus grove caretaking business that managed thousands of acres for other owners.

However, he also has a real estate license, which is useful given the amount of land that is changing hands. He recently sold off acres in Polk County to a home developer, and has used that money to pay off debt and develop plans to replant thousands of trees in more productive groves.

“I would like to think that we’re at the bottom, and we’re starting to climb back up that hill,” Murphy says.

A bug-free tree

A whole ecosystem of businesses dependent on Florida citrus is at risk if the crops fail, including 33,000 full-time and part-time jobs and an economic impact of $6.8 billion in Florida alone. Besides growers, there are juice processors, grove caretakers, fertilizer sellers, packing houses, nurseries and candy manufacturers, all hoping for a fix for citrus greening disease.

Tom Davidson, whose parents founded Davidson of Dundee Citrus Candy and Jelly Factory in Lake Wales in 1966, says the drop in citrus production has impacted what flavor jellies the business is able to produce and the prices it charges to customers.

“We’re really hoping that the scientists can get this figured out so we can we can get back to what we did,” Davidson says.

Researchers have been working for eight years on a genetically modified tree that can kill the tiny insects responsible for citrus greening. The process involves inserting a gene into a citrus tree that produces a protein that can kill baby Asian citrus psyllids by making holes in their guts, according to Lukasz Stelinski, an entomology professor at the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Citrus Research and Education Center.

It could be at least three years before bug-resistant trees can be planted, leaving Florida growers looking for help from other technologies. They include planting trees inside protective screens and covering young trees with white bags to keep out the bugs, injecting trees with an antibiotic, and finding trees that have become resistant to greening through natural mutation and distributing them to other groves.

“It’s kind of like being a Lions fan before the Detroit Lions started to win games,” Stelinski says. “I’m hoping that we are making that turnaround.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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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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