It’s a Monday night in June and hundreds have braved the haze of Canadian wildfires to gather in a cavernous sports facility in the city of Red Deer, Alberta.

An Alberta team, the Edmonton Oilers, are taking on the Florida Panthers in a National Hockey League finals game tonight. The atmosphere is heavy with anticipation.

But these people aren’t here for hockey. This is a rally for Alberta independence.

It might be hard to believe, given Canadian sports fans’ recent booing of “The Star Spangled Banner,” but not all Canadians took offense to US President Donald Trump’s questioning of their country’s sovereignty.

In oil-rich Alberta, where a movement for independence from Canada appears to be gathering steam, many see in Trump a powerful and important ally whose haranguing of their former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was as welcome as his calls to “drill baby, drill.”

Though some see US statehood as a step too far, many in the Red Deer crowd believe the US president – as a fellow pro-oil conservative – would recognize a breakaway Alberta should a vote on independence go their way.

“Donald Trump is not the savior of the world,” says Albert Talsma, a welding contractor from Bentley. “But right now he’s North America’s best asset.”

With their “Make Alberta Great Again” hats, “Alberta Republic” T-shirts and posters declaring “Albertans for Alberta!” it’s not hard to see parallels to the US president’s MAGA movement and the forces that inspired it.

Separatists here have long argued that Canada’s federal system fails to represent their interests; that the federal government’s efforts to stymie climate change are holding back Alberta’s lucrative oil industry (the largest in Canada); that they pay more than they get back through federal taxation; that their conservative values are drowned out by the more liberal eastern provinces.

“Alberta hasn’t been treated fairly since 1905, when we joined Confederation. They basically used the west as a colony, to take wealth from the west to support the east,” says Kate Graham, a singing grandmother from Calgary.

She opens the rally with a rendition of Janis Joplin’s “Mercedez Benz,” the lyrics modified to promote independence. Like Janis, she sings it a cappella, before spending much of the rest of the event at a booth by the door, selling merch emblazoned with the slogan “I AM ALBERTAN.”

Similar disenchantment is voiced by a steady stream of Albertans, each venting against their mother country on a stage flanked by a large provincial flag strung across a soccer goal.

“They want to stifle our (oil) industry,” says Mitch Sylvestre, a businessman from Bonnyville and one of the rally’s chief organizers, his hoarse voice echoing over the PA system.

“We have cancer. We have a problem,” says Sylvestre. “We have it large.”

Hopes for a vote in ‘one of God’s treasures’

In a strange twist, the push to get Alberta out of Canada has gained momentum just as much of the country has united in patriotism in the face of Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexation.

Soon after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals rode a wave of anti-Trump sentiment to win the 2025 federal election in April, the Alberta Legislature passed a law making it easier to organize a referendum on independence.

Under the new law, petitions for a province-wide vote now require just 177,000 signatures – down from 600,000 previously – and those signatures can be gathered over a period of four months rather than three. The province is home to nearly 5 million people, according to Statistics Canada, representing more than a tenth of the population of the entire country.

One of the most vocal advocates for a referendum is Jeffrey Rath, a lawyer and co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), which organized the Red Deer rally.

Rath, well over six feet tall in a cowboy hat and boots, has a ranch just outside of Calgary. He raises race horses there and follows the sport closely, especially the Kentucky Derby – where this year, he notes with a grin, “’Sovereignty’ beat ‘Journalism.’”

“If you wanna know what’s special about Alberta, just look around, right?” Rath says with a sweep of his hand.

The view from the rise above Rath’s horse pasture is superb: quaking aspen, white pine and green rolling hills.

“It’s one of God’s treasures on earth. And the people here are very distinct people that have a very distinct culture and that are interested in maintaining that culture.”

In Rath’s eyes, Trump’s attitude toward Canada is an opportunity. His group is counting on US government support in the event of success at the ballot box.

“Trump’s election has given us a lot of hope,” Rath says. “If anybody is going to have the guts to recognize an independent Alberta, (it) would be the Trump administration.”

Western alienation

Separatism is not new in Canada, but it’s only had real political power in the predominantly Francophone province of Quebec, which has numerous pro-independence parties and voted in two referendums on independence in the past 50 years, rejecting it by a 60/40 margin in 1980 and by around one percentage point in 1995.

In Alberta, enthusiasm for separation has waxed and waned for decades, fueled initially by “Western alienation” – resentment felt in western Canada against a federal system dominated by the more populous eastern provinces. More recently, the movement has attracted Albertans who were angered by federally mandated lockdowns during the Covid pandemic. Among them was Rath, who has in the past faced controversy for suggesting government officials should face murder and negligent homicide charges over what he claims are the ill-effects of the Covid vaccine.

A recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute found about a third of Albertans currently support independence, though that support does not break down equally throughout the population.

Some of the loudest critics of the idea come from Alberta’s indigenous communities, whose treaties with the Canadian crown are older than the province itself. Under pressure from that community, the government added a provision to the referendum bill that guarantees their treaty rights whatever the result.

While Smith’s party proposed the referendum bill, she says she is against separation herself, preferring to “get Alberta to exert its sovereignty within a united Canada.”

“We have had, from time to time, these kinds of initiatives flare up,” says Smith. “And they’re almost always in response to a federal government that’s out of control. But they have all subsided when the federal government got back in its own lane.”

“I think that it’s a notice to Ottawa that they’ve got to take this seriously,” Smith adds. “The question is, what can we do to address it?”

The 51st state?

One of the more explosive questions surrounding secession is whether an independent Alberta might join the United States.

In February, a billboard appeared along the highway between Calgary and Edmonton, with text urging onlookers to tell Premier Smith that Alberta ought to “Join the USA!” superimposed over a picture of her shaking hands with Trump.

“I don’t think Albertans are very keen to trade a bad relationship with Ottawa with a bad relationship with Washington,” Smith says when asked about the possibility.

But others, like construction worker Stephen Large of Czar, Alberta, feel it would be good to have the might of the US on their side – particularly if negotiations fail in the event of a “yes” vote for independence.

“The minute something happens here toward independence, our federal government is going to be furious,” says Large, who wears a red “Make Alberta Great Again” cap.

“They will pull out all the stops, military and police and whatever they can find to lock us down, lock us in.”

Large points to how former Prime Minister Trudeau briefly invoked the Emergencies Act when Canadian truckers blockaded downtown Ottawa to protest cross-border vaccine mandates in 2022.

The statute, which had never been used before, allowed Canadian law enforcement to take extraordinary measures to restore public order – including freezing the bank accounts of certain protesters and banning public assembly in parts of Ottawa. The law also allows the government to deploy troops within Canada to enforce the law, though Trudeau did not invoke that part of the provision in 2022.

“We’re gonna need some support from somewhere, and the only place on Earth that is worthy of their support is the United States military,” Large says.

A woman sitting in front of Large overhears him and turns around, nodding in agreement.

“I’m with him,” she says, introducing herself as Evelyn Ranger of Red Deer. “I’m not sure that Alberta or the western provinces, even together, can make it on their own. So, the States is still the better way to go, because you’ve got the military, you’ve got the trade and everything already set there.”

For his part, Rath refuses to consider whether the federal government might invoke the Emergencies Act or use other measures to put down his movement if it were to unilaterally declare Alberta independent in the event of a “yes” vote.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but we don’t see that happening,” Rath says.

Asked if he would be up for an interview at that point, he grins.

“Yeah,” Rath replies, before letting out a laugh. “It might be from a jail cell.”

The bodies of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and two civilians killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks have been recovered from Gaza in a military hostage recovery operation.

In a special operation carried out by the Israel Security Agency (ISA) and the IDF, the bodies of civilians, Ofra Keidar and Yonatan Samerano, and soldier Shay Levinson were recovered from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the ISA and IDF said in a joint statement Sunday.

Ofra Keidar, from the kibbutz Be’eri community, was killed by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023. The 71-year-old’s body was taken to Gaza, where it had been held since. Keidar was a wife and mother of three. Her husband was also killed in Hamas’ attack.

“On that dark Saturday Ofra went, as usual, for a walk in the fields she loved – and never returned,” her kibbutz said in a statement.

“Ofra was one of the women leading Be’eri to be the flourished kibbutz it has become, and set an example for other women while showing strength and leadership skills. She left three children and seven grandchildren.”

Samerano, 21, from Tel Aviv, was killed by Hamas militants who took his body after fleeing the Nova music festival.

Levinson, a dual German-Israeli national and tank commander, was killed in combat on October 7, the joint ISA-IDF statement said. The 19-year-old’s body was then taken to Gaza.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said: “Alongside the grief and pain, the return of their bodies provides some comfort to the families who have waited in agony, uncertainty, and doubt for 625 days.”

The forum also called for the return of the remaining 50 hostages in Gaza to be a priority as Israel continues its conflict with Iran. “Particularly against the backdrop of current military developments and the significant achievements in Iran, we want to emphasize that bringing back the remaining 50 hostages is the key to achieving complete Israeli victory,” it said.

In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his “heartfelt condolences” to the families of Keidar, Samerano and Levinson and thanked Israeli soldiers for a “successful operation.”

In a warehouse in northeast Nigeria, a nonprofit’s stocks of food to treat malnourished children and pregnant women are running low.

The organization, Action Against Hunger (ACF), is running a project to combat malnutrition that had been relying on funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to procure much-needed therapeutic food sachets. But the project was intermittently suspended, leaving ACF unable to procure enough of the nutrient-rich food during the peak season of malnutrition.

It’s one of the many urgent, lifesaving aid projects left in limbo and in need of additional resources following the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID.

But now, a group of former USAID staff has come together to connect big donors with cost-effective projects like this, which desperately need cash to carry out operations already in the pipeline.

The primary goal is “to save as many lives as possible,” said Robert Rosenbaum, a former USAID portfolio manager and one of the people spearheading the initiative, which they are calling Project Resource Optimization (PRO). “At this point, there really are people who are dying as a result of these (budget) decisions and this halting of the work.”

Rosenbaum said that thinking about cuts to American programs tackling things like malnutrition, extreme poverty and disease prevention was keeping him up at night after he lost his job earlier this year.

So, he and other laid-off USAID workers decided to do something. They began vetting projects being carried out by USAID partner organizations, which had abruptly lost their funding earlier this year.

They gradually built a spreadsheet – dubbed the Urgent & Vetted Projects list – and started matchmaking, setting up meetings between the most critical and cost-effective programs and donors who wanted to help, but didn’t know where to start.

The spreadsheet was first inspired by reach-outs from a few small family foundations seeking expert guidance on where to best put their dollars, amid the initial uncertainty surrounding US government aid cuts. But it quickly grew into something bigger.

It became clear to Rosenbaum that there was an opportunity to “expand the overall pool of private philanthropy” and bring in donations from people who might not have considered giving to international aid projects until this year.

“There have been a handful of folks who have come out of the woodwork and literally written us an email that’s like, ‘I set aside $100,000, $200,000, a million dollars… And this is exactly how I want to think about giving… So, help us figure out how to do this,’” he said.

Earlier this week, the PRO team also launched a tool for smaller donors to contribute online, crowdfunding for some of the most critical aid projects.

Now, anyone can give a one-time or monthly contribution to the team’s “Rapid Response Fund” to support vetted projects in Sudan, Haiti, Nigeria and more.

“For most of the humanitarian projects that we’ve talked to… sometime this summer, if the funding doesn’t come through, the lights will go off and it will be very hard to stand back up,” Rosenbaum said.

“Part of what we’re offering for funders is that the fixed cost of standing these projects up has already been taken on by the US government. The staff has already been hired, they’re trained, they’re in place. The commodities, in many cases, have been procured and are sitting in a warehouse,” Rosenbaum said. “There’s all these efficiencies.

“But the flip side is that the cost of shutting them down is extraordinarily high,” he added, noting that typically it takes years for local organizations to build trust with authorities, leaders and communities.

In Mali, an organization called the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) was at risk of shutting down a project that delivers medical care to children under five, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, as well as providing mobile health clinics to internally displaced people.

“We were forced to suspend activities and reduce activities at different points,” said Carlota Ruiz, the organization’s head of grant management, adding that more than half ALIMA’s operating budget in Mali had come from USAID. “One of our main concerns in terms of navigating suspensions or project closures was the risk to our credibility and our relationships with the Ministry of Health and the communities that we work with.”

Weeks ago, the organization was facing the prospect of shutting down vital services, but now a new grant will allow ALIMA to provide 70,000 medical consultations to people in need and treat more than 5,000 children with severe acute malnutrition.

Meanwhile, in Nigeria, ACF says it is close to securing funding to keep one of its malnutrition projects going, after coordinating with the PRO team.

The funding will go towards procuring more ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF). The timing was “extremely critical,” according to an ACF staff member on the ground.

But the funding will only go towards that one project. ACF also supports programs in northern Nigeria that provide food assistance, clean water and sanitation, and support hundreds of health clinics.

“It will be very meaningful, and it will be really very useful to ensure continuity of activity and save the lives of thousands of children,” the ACF worker said of the grant about to be finalized. “But this project cannot address all the other aspects of our work.”