标签： North America

Canada is facing its most significant test of national unity in decades after Alberta’s provincial government announced a non-binding referendum this October on the province’s place within the Canadian federation, capping years of growing separatist sentiment in the resource-rich western region. The announcement came one day after Prime Minister Mark Carney publicly reaffirmed Alberta’s irreplaceable role in the country, emphasizing that the province’s contributions have been foundational to Canada’s growth and that his government’s national reform efforts center on including all regions, including Alberta.

The separatist movement in Alberta has gained traction over the last several years, driven by widespread frustration among many residents who feel their province’s economic and political priorities are systematically ignored by federal policymakers based in Ottawa. Most polling to date shows a clear majority of Albertans oppose full independence, with roughly one quarter of respondents voicing support for separation. Earlier this year, a pro-unity petition collected more than 400,000 signatures from across the province, demonstrating the depth of support for remaining part of Canada.

Despite that majority, grassroots separatist pressure forced Premier Danielle Smith to address the demand for a public vote. A separatist petition crossed the 300,000 signature threshold required to trigger a binding independence referendum earlier this year, but a successful legal challenge by Alberta First Nations groups halted the signature verification process earlier this month, leaving the original plebiscite plan in legal limbo. A court ruled that the Alberta provincial government failed to fulfill its legal obligation to consult with Indigenous communities on the referendum plan before approving the petition process.

Smith has publicly rejected the court ruling, and while the decision blocks her from moving forward with a binding vote immediately, she has pushed forward with a new voting plan for October 19. On that date, Albertans will answer a two-part question: whether the province should remain part of Canada, or whether the provincial government should begin the formal legal process to hold a binding independence referendum at a future date.

“I will not have a legal mistake by a single judge silence the voices of hundreds of thousands of Albertans,” Smith said in her public announcement. “Alberta’s future will be decided by Albertans, not the courts.” The premier added that her government is appealing the original court ruling, a process that could stretch into a lengthy legal battle, and confirmed she will personally vote to keep Alberta within Canada. She also committed to campaigning for the pro-unity side through a series of summer town halls, arguing the province can no longer delay addressing the independence question. When asked if she risked repeating the legacy of former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the Brexit referendum that split the U.K. despite opposing the exit side, Smith said she has no fear of Albertans’ judgement. “You have to be prepared to have the debate, and you have to be prepared to defend your position,” she stated.

Prime Minister Carney, speaking during a tour of renovation work at Canada’s federal Parliament building on Friday, struck a unifying tone in his first public comments following Smith’s announcement. “We’re renovating the country as we go, and Alberta being at the centre of that is essential,” Carney said, praising the “huge contributions” the province has made to Canada’s national identity and economy, and noting his government is working to improve conditions for all Canadians, including those in Alberta.

Smith’s compromise plan has failed to win support from either side of the debate, drawing widespread criticism from pro-independence activists, Indigenous leaders and provincial opposition politicians. The Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation issued a harsh statement condemning Smith’s government as “undemocratic, authoritarian, and willing to bend to the whims of a loud, angry minority.” Naheed Nenshi, leader of Alberta’s official opposition New Democratic Party, dismissed the October vote as “needless,” accusing Smith of deliberately delaying action to shore up her own hold on political power. Even separatist leaders have expressed frustration with the plan: Mitch Sylvestre, a leading figure in the pro-independence movement, told the *Globe and Mail* that he “feel[s] duped” by the revised proposal. In response to the criticism, Smith defended her decision during a Friday press conference, saying the province cannot “kick the can down the road” for years by leaving the independence question unresolved.

A high-stakes immigration controversy centered on the Trump administration’s border policies has reached a dramatic conclusion, after a federal judge threw out the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant wrongfully deported to one of El Salvador’s most notorious maximum-security facilities last year.

Abrego Garcia’s journey through the US immigration system has been one of the most visible flashpoints in national debates over executive overreach in immigration enforcement. The 30-year-old, who entered the United States as a teenager from El Salvador and has resided in Maryland for years while married to a US citizen, first received court-ordered protection from deportation in 2019. That protection was granted on the basis that he faced credible threats of deadly persecution from gangs in his home country.

Despite the court’s order, the Trump administration wrongfully deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in March 2025. He spent months confined in CECOT, El Salvador’s infamous mega-prison infamous for its harsh, overcrowded conditions, before the US Supreme Court ordered the federal government to facilitate his return to the US. Instead of releasing him after repatriation in June 2025, however, federal authorities moved to charge him with human smuggling connected to a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop, where he had been found transporting multiple individuals in his vehicle.

Abrego Garcia immediately entered a plea of not guilty to the charges, and his legal team argued the case was nothing more than a vindictive effort to justify the government’s earlier wrongful deportation. On Friday, that argument won the support of US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who formally dismissed the case in a detailed ruling that called out the executive branch’s politically motivated prosecution.

“The Court does not reach its conclusion lightly,” Crenshaw wrote in her opinion. The judge made clear that the prosecution was only revived to retroactively justify the botched deportation, noting that federal investigators had closed the probe into the 2022 traffic stop back in November 2022. The case was only reopened after Abrego Garcia successfully sued to challenge his wrongful removal and secure his return to the US.

“The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution,” Crenshaw stated from her Tennessee courtroom. The judge also emphasized that the Trump administration had failed to provide any evidence to counter the clear presumption of vindictiveness surrounding the charges.

Speaking after his release from federal detention Friday, Abrego Garcia declared, “I stand before you as a free man.” The US Department of Justice has not yet issued any public comment in response to the judge’s ruling.

What was framed as a redress fund for people harmed by what the current U.S. Justice Department calls improper political weaponization of law enforcement has quickly erupted into a national political firestorm, as high-profile critics of former President Donald Trump have stepped forward to announce they will pursue claims against the fund — upending widespread assumptions that the pot of money was intended exclusively for Trump allies.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche first announced the $1.8 billion fund as part of a settlement agreement with Trump over the unauthorized leak of his personal tax returns to the press. From the outset, Blanche emphasized that the fund was built to compensate people harmed by unlawful government targeting. In a explanatory memo sent to skeptical Republican senators, Blanche justified the massive size of the fund by noting that “literally tens of millions of Americans were subjected to improper and unlawful government targeting,” adding that no partisan barrier would block claims: “there is no partisan restriction; Democrats can submit claims, too.”

But the broad wording of the fund’s eligibility rules has created an unexpected scenario: the first high-profile figures to publicly announce their intention to file claims are some of Trump’s most vocal political opponents, starting with Michael Cohen, Trump’s one-time personal fixer who turned on his former boss and testified against him in two separate high-profile criminal trials.

“After years of being smeared, surveilled, financially exposed, imprisoned, and silenced, I will file a claim asking whether America’s justice system became America’s political weapon,” Cohen wrote in a post on the social platform X.

Cohen has a long and fraught history with the legal system: he pleaded guilty to a slate of charges including lying to Congress, tax evasion, illegal campaign finance violations, and bank fraud in 2018. He was briefly released from prison early at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but was rearrested shortly after, before a federal judge ultimately ordered his release, finding the government had improperly retaliated against him for preparing to publish a tell-all book critical of Trump. Trump and his legal team, which includes Blanche during Trump’s ongoing Manhattan criminal trial, have repeatedly questioned Cohen’s credibility, pointing to his prior conviction for lying to federal investigators.

Cohen is far from alone. Former FBI Director James Comey, who was twice indicted by the current Justice Department over cases that multiple legal experts have described as legally questionable, confirmed to CNN that he also intends to join the line for compensation. Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017 and has been a public critic of the former president ever since, noted that the fund was explicitly created to compensate people targeted for political, personal, or ideological reasons. “So I’m guessing, I’ll be in line,” Comey said, adding a pointed jab: “I hope I’ll be ahead of those who savagely beat police officers and sacked the Capitol.”

Comey’s first indictment was ultimately dismissed by a judge, who sided with his legal team’s argument that the prosecution was driven by improper retaliation. A second pending case accuses Comey of threatening the president via a social media post that showed seashells arranged to spell “86 47” — a reference to removing Trump from office, a reference that Comey’s team calls a harmless political joke. Blanche has defended the new charges, arguing that any threat against a sitting U.S. president must be treated as a serious matter.

Other prominent Trump critics have also joined the push for compensation. Allison Gill, the political commentator behind the popular “Mueller, She Wrote” podcast and X account, says she will file a claim for $8.647 million, alleging she lost her government job after the Trump administration retaliated against her for the content of her criticism-focused podcast.

To date, the Department of Justice has declined to respond to requests for comment or clarification on whether high-profile figures like Cohen, Comey, and Gill actually meet the fund’s eligibility requirements.

The opaque structure of the fund has already drawn widespread criticism from both sides of the aisle. Initial assumptions that the fund would primarily deliver payouts to hundreds of people convicted for their roles in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot — a group Trump pardoned on his first day back in office — have proven partially correct: multiple people charged in connection with the attack have told U.S. media they hope to receive compensation, and several conservative Trump-aligned figures have already filed claims. Michael Caputo, a first-term Trump administration official who was targeted in the 2016 Russian interference investigation, has already publicly posted his claim for $2.7 million in damages.

Bipartisan groups of lawmakers, including many members of Congress who were forced to evacuate and hide during the January 6 riot, have demanded Blanche release clear details on who qualifies for payouts. The settlement agreement explicitly bars Trump and his immediate family from receiving any money from the fund, but that has done little to ease concerns.

A closed-door meeting between Blanche and Senate Republicans on Thursday turned tense, multiple media outlets reported, with many lawmakers voicing strong opposition to the fund. Pennsylvania Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick has already sent a formal letter to Blanche asking for clear answers on whether “individuals convicted of federal crimes associated of acts of violence” will be allowed to receive payouts. Fitzpatrick has also introduced bipartisan legislation with New York Democrat Tom Suozzi that would block any federal money from being used to pay out claims from the fund.

Blanche has pushed back against claims from Democratic lawmakers that the fund is nothing more than an unauthorized “slush fund” for Trump allies, working to reassure wavering Republican senators that their opposition would not derail other administration priorities. Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune has publicly stated he is “not a big fan” of the fund, though some conservative Republicans have come out in support of the initiative. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville defended the fund on the Senate floor, arguing that “hundreds” of “innocent patriotic Americans sat behind bars for the past five years over this made-up witch hunt” connected to the January 6 investigations.

The fund will be overseen by a five-person board appointed entirely by the attorney general, with one seat to be filled in coordination with Congress, leaving many unanswered questions about how claims will be reviewed and vetted as applications begin to roll in from across the political spectrum.

A controversial $1.8 billion compensation fund created by the Trump administration has thrown federal government funding negotiations into chaos, after a bloc of Trump’s own Republican lawmakers blocked a critical spending bill over fierce objections to the initiative. The so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund, established by the U.S. Department of Justice, was created as part of a settlement agreement that ended former President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the unauthorized release of his personal tax records. In exchange for dropping his legal challenge, Trump secured a formal apology from the agency and approval for the fund, which is intended to pay individuals who claim they were unfairly targeted for political investigations by previous presidential administrations.

Critics on both sides of the aisle have slammed the initiative as an unaccountable “slush fund” reserved for Trump’s political allies. The most explosive controversy centers on eligibility for claimants charged in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, many of whom received full pardons from Trump during his first day back in office. According to Department of Justice (DoJ) data, nearly 1,600 people have been charged with crimes connected to the riot, including 175 defendants facing charges for using deadly weapons or inflicting serious harm on the roughly 140 police officers injured during the assault.

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell issued a blistering rebuke of the plan this week, saying, “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – Take your pick.” North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis echoed the criticism, calling the fund “stupid on stilts” and arguing that using taxpayer dollars to compensate rioters who attacked police is fundamentally indefensible. “That’s absurd,” Tillis said of the prospect of pardoned, convicted rioters receiving payouts. “It will invariably put us in a position where your taxpayer dollars and my taxpayer dollars could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned, and now we’re going to pay them for that?”

Democratic lawmakers have joined Republicans in condemning the fund, also branding it a slush fund for the president’s closest allies. The fund has already drawn interest from a range of claimants: Michael Caputo, a Trump ally who served as a health official during the president’s first term, confirmed he submitted a $2.7 million claim earlier this week, arguing he was wrongfully targeted by the FBI during the 2016 Russia interference investigation. “The machinery of government was clearly politically weaponized against my family,” Caputo wrote on social media. “They found nothing; we lost everything.” Even Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney who was convicted of lying to investigators, tax evasion and campaign finance violations, has announced he intends to file a claim for compensation, turning the initiative into a target for both supporters and critics of the president.

On Thursday, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, the nation’s top law enforcement official, traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican senators and address their concerns, but the outreach failed to win over skeptical lawmakers. A group of Senate Republicans insisted on attaching strict restrictions to the fund as part of the broader government funding package up for a vote this week, but no compromise could be reached. As a result, Senate Majority Leader John Thune was forced to scrap the scheduled vote on the full spending bill, leaving federal funding in limbo.

After the cancellation, Thune told reporters that administration officials bear responsibility for breaking the impasse, noting “we have a lot of members who are concerned, obviously, about the timing, but also about the substance” of the fund. Opposition is not limited to the Senate: in the House of Representatives, Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania has emerged as a leading opponent of the initiative, and is drafting standalone legislation that would eliminate the fund entirely. He has already submitted formal questions to Blanche demanding more details about how the fund would operate and how claims would be vetted.

When DoJ officials formally announced the fund on Monday, they said it would allocate a total of $1.776 billion to settle and pay out approved claims, overseen by a five-member independent commission tasked with vetting applications and approving payouts. Congress holds constitutional authority over all federal spending, meaning lawmakers must approve the use of taxpayer dollars for the initiative before any payouts can be distributed.

In a sudden announcement that has rippled through U.S. political and intelligence circles, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has confirmed she will resign her post in the second Trump administration, citing an urgent personal crisis: her husband Abraham has recently been diagnosed with bone cancer.

The resignation, which will take full effect on June 30, was revealed through a resignation letter obtained by CBS News, a U.S. partner of the BBC. In the heartfelt correspondence, Gabbard emphasized the foundational role her husband has played in her public life. “His strength and love have sustained me through every challenge,” she wrote, adding that she could not in good conscience leave him to navigate his cancer treatment alone while fulfilling the relentless, time-intensive demands of leading the U.S. intelligence community. “I cannot ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming position,” Gabbard stated.

Following the official confirmation of the resignation, former President Donald Trump took to social media to publicly praise Gabbard’s service. The departing intelligence chief “has done an incredible job, and we will miss her,” Trump wrote, noting that Gabbard’s choice to prioritize her family’s health is both understandable and honorable. “She rightfully, wants to be with him, bringing him back to good health as they currently fight a tough battle together. I have no doubt he will soon be better than ever,” Trump added. To ensure a smooth transition, Trump announced that Aaron Lukas, the current principal deputy director of national intelligence, will assume the role of acting director once Gabbard departs at the end of June.

Gabbard’s tenure at the helm of U.S. intelligence was relatively short but marked by its place in a shifting U.S. foreign policy landscape. A steadfast supporter of Trump during his successful 2024 presidential comeback campaign, Gabbard was confirmed to the top intelligence post just weeks after Trump reclaimed the White House in 2025. As Director of National Intelligence, her core responsibilities included coordinating operations across 18 separate U.S. intelligence agencies and serving as the president’s primary advisor on all national security and intelligence matters, making her one of the most powerful figures in the U.S. national security apparatus.

Notably, Gabbard has remained largely out of the public eye in recent months, even as the Trump administration oversaw a series of high-stakes foreign policy actions: expanded military operations against Iran, increased diplomatic and economic pressure on Cuba, and the controversial removal of Venezuela’s sitting president. Her sudden departure from the role adds a new layer of uncertainty to the administration’s intelligence leadership as it continues to advance its aggressive global policy agenda.