Hello and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We start with the news 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.
Troop Information
An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on background basis in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.
The troops are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and police officers, Northern Command said online.
The forces, along with about 300 from Illinois, had reached on 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 activated for 60 days. The official wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the troops were armed.
Political Context
It comes as 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 failing to protect ICE personnel!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. 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.
Additional Developments
- The president announced that Hamas and Israel have accepted a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
- News of the Middle East deal was applauded by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses 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 political content creators. The influencers report on liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more akin to opposition research 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 Democrats tried to oppose the government's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's false claim that large numbers of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
