Greetings and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We begin with the report that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.
Troop Information
An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details that have not been made public.
The troops are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and police officers, Northern Command said online.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, had arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the military command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the personnel were equipped.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks coincide with state military forces have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Other Updates
- The president declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- News of the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
- During White House event, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that requires that the authorities provide a public reason for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the president on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called political content creators. The content producers report on liberal demonstrations in a highly political manner, more akin to opposition research than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans rejected a military authorization measure that would have limited Trump's authority to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after opposition party tried to oppose the administration's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean Sea.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
