Greetings and welcome to the latest developments in US politics. We start with the news that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, as stated by a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details that have not been made public.
The military personnel are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.
The troops, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had reached on Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, approximately 90 kilometers southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the military command and have been deployed for 60 days. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the personnel were equipped.
Background Situation
It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's remarks come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have accepted a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
- News of the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During presidential gathering, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'Habeas Corpus' and referred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the participants who contributed testimony at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called political content creators. The influencers report on liberal demonstrations in a highly political manner, more similar to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's ability to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean Sea.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in the Oregon city. The accurate count of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
