Hello and welcome to the current updates in US politics. We begin with the report that a limited contingent 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 unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to reveal operational details that have not been made public.
The troops are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and police officers, Northern Command stated publicly.
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 500 troops are under the military command and have been deployed for two months. The official wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of failing to protect 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. "The state governor also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the order of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- News of the Middle East deal was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
- During White House event, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a highly incorrect definition of the fundamental legal concept that requires that the authorities provide a official justification for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the participants who contributed testimony at the White House "political discussion" organized by the administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers report on leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more similar to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
- Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to oppose the administration's extraordinary use of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean Sea.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's false claim that large numbers of people have been murdered by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
