Hello and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We begin with the report that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Troop Information
An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were operating in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to 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 secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, had reached on Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the troops were armed.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"Chicago Mayor should be in prison for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's remarks come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite opposition from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.
Other Updates
- Donald Trump announced that the conflicting parties have agreed to a tentative deal 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 urged Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During presidential gathering, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to opposition research than neutral journalism.
- GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: one.
