Greetings and welcome to the most recent updates in US politics. We start with the news that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Greater Chicago region 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 operational details that have not been made public.
The military personnel are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, had reached on Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, approximately 90 kilometers southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been deployed for 60 days. The spokesperson 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 city leader, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for not protecting Ice Officers!" 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 comments come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the order of the federal administration, despite opposition from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- News of the Middle East deal was praised by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be given the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' 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 official justification for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the participants who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- GOP senators voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's ability to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's extraordinary use of the military to eliminate vessels 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 political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
