ICE raid sparks chaos at California cannabis farm: Unbiased Updates, July 11, 2025
A shooting, tear gas and kids caught in the middle. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at a California cannabis farm, and now the feds are offering big money to find who fired on agents.
Plus, President Donald Trump takes aim at Canada. A blunt letter to the prime minister accuses Ottawa of slapping back on tariffs and slacking off on fentanyl.
And Trump heads to Texas a week after a devastating flood ravaged a riverside community. Nearly 200 people remain unaccounted for following the flooding.
These stories and more highlight your Unbiased Updates for Friday, July 11, 2025.
$50K reward after man appears to fire gun at ICE agents during raid
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is offering a $50,000 reward to find out who opened fire on federal immigration agents during a tense confrontation near Los Angeles. The shooting occurred on Thursday, July 10, at a growing protest outside a marijuana farm in Ventura County.
No one was hit, but it signaled a dangerous escalation in what quickly became a chaotic clash between agents and demonstrators.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted a video that appeared to show children fleeing tear gas, calling the federal response outrageous.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said agents found 10 children, all undocumented, working on the farm. The farm is now under investigation for potential child labor violations.
Newsom criticized the use of crowd control measures, saying, “California prosecutes child exploiters and traffickers. Trump tear-gasses children, rips them from their parents and deports farmworkers.”
This was one of two large-scale immigration raids in the region on Thursday, with the other taking place in Carpinteria, just north of Ventura.
Trump threatens 35% tariff on Canadian imports
President Donald Trump has again exercised his tariff authority, this time targeting Canada. Late Thursday night, July 10, the president posted a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, threatening a 35% tariff on imports beginning Aug.1 unless the two countries reach a new agreement.
Trump accused Canada of retaliatory tariffs and not doing enough to stop fentanyl from crossing the border, even though U.S. data shows Canada plays a small role in the drug’s flow. The president said Canada has been particularly unfair to American dairy farmers with levies up to 400%.
In a post on X, Canada’s opposition leader Pierre Poilievre called the move unjustified, saying, “These tariffs will damage both our countries.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney also responded, saying the two nations will continue to negotiate for a fair deal.
Canada is America’s top export market, and the tariff threat arrives as Trump signals potential hikes for other U.S. trading partners. This raises fears of an economic ripple effect just weeks before the August deadline when they are scheduled to take effect.
Trump to visit Texas; more than 170+ still missing 1 week after floods
President Donald Trump will visit Texas on Friday, July 11, one week after catastrophic flooding swept through the state’s Hill Country, killing at least 120 people. Search crews continue their search for survivors, with more than 170 people missing, most of whom are in Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River rose nearly 30 feet last Friday, July 4.
Criticism continues to rise over the absence of public warnings. Kerr County lacks audible flood alarms, unlike other high-risk areas, giving residents little time to evacuate.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., has called for a federal investigation into Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) response to the flood.
In a letter to congressional committees, Moskowitz wrote:
“As a former emergency management director of Florida, I am alarmed by reports that FEMA’s response to the Texas floods was delayed and hampered by a new Department of Homeland Security ‘cost-control’ policy imposed by Secretary Kristi Noem.
If accurate, this represents a major deviation from long-standing FEMA protocol that may have slowed down lifesaving efforts and contributed to the tragedy’s severity.”
In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, July 10, Noem said the accusations that she slowed the process aren’t true.
“Our Coast Guard, our border patrol, BORTAC teams were there immediately. Every single thing they asked for, we were there,” Noem said. “The governor and the emergency director, Nim Kidd, are fantastic, and nobody there has said anything about that, that they didn’t get everything that they wanted immediately, or that they needed, and I’m proud of the work that we’ve done to support that.”
FEMA’s acting director, David Richardson, has also drawn criticism for not yet having visited Texas after the floods. It’s a sharp break from tradition — FEMA chiefs typically meet with state leaders and survivors during major disasters to show federal support. Richardson oversees the nation’s disaster response, which includes coordinating search and rescue operations and deploying federal aid.
Israel says some of Iran’s nuclear fuel may have survived strike
Israel now believes some of Iran’s most dangerous nuclear material might have survived last month’s U.S. airstrikes. A top Israeli official told the New York Times that the material might be buried and potentially retrievable.
The White House is defending the strikes, telling Fox News it “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities, adding the world is safer thanks to Trump’s decisive leadership. However, U.S. defense officials say they are still waiting for data to confirm whether America’s massive bunker-busting bombs actually reached their targets.
Trump has said the strikes — part of operation Midnight Hammer — set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by years. But both U.S. and Israeli intelligence now suggest that while the damage was extensive, some enriched uranium may still be intact.
Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil suing Trump admin for $20M
A Syrian-born Columbia graduate student, who helped organize pro-Palestinian rallies on campus, is now suing the Trump administration for $20 million and demanding an apology.
Federal agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil in March, removing him from the streets for leading protests against Israel. He claims he was merely a spokesman and that his arrest was illegal. From New York, he was transferred to an immigration detention center in Louisiana, far from his family, where he asserts authorities denied him medication, gave him almost inedible food and forced him to sleep under bright lights.
Khalil spent 104 days in custody before a judge ordered his release, ruling that deporting him over his political beliefs was likely unconstitutional.
“What they did to me is they tried something, it failed, but still the harm is already there. So unless they feel that there’s some sort of accountability for that, they will continue to go unchecked,” Khalil said.
The Trump administration is still trying to deport Khalil over alleged green card violations. He claims he’s being targeted because of his views, including his belief that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund what he calls a genocide in Gaza. Homeland Security describes his lawsuit as “absurd,” accusing Khalil of threatening Jewish students and spreading hateful rhetoric.
Denver museum makes dinosaur discovery beneath its own parking lot
A dinosaur discovery right beneath a dinosaur museum’s parking lot.
“It looks like a piece of dinosaur bone, and right above it is some coal from the plants that that critter might have munched on nearly 67 million years ago. How cool is that?” Earth sciences curator Dr. James Hagadorn said.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science, famous for its full-size dinosaur skeletons, stumbled upon a real fossil while digging to explore geothermal energy options for the building. It may not look like much, but museum officials say the chances of finding it were so slim — the curator of geology called it like “winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day.”
Experts say it’s probably from a small plant-eating dinosaur, though it’s impossible to identify which one.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
