Greetings and welcome to the most recent updates in US politics. We start with the report that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has begun guarding government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been made public.
The troops are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.
The forces, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been activated for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the troops were armed.
Background Situation
It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's remarks come as state military forces have started deployment in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Other Updates
- Donald Trump declared that the conflicting parties have agreed to a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation 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 highly incorrect definition of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the participants who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers cover leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more akin to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's ability to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after opposition party tried to oppose the government's extraordinary use of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
