Greetings and welcome to the latest developments in American political affairs. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.
Deployment Details
An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were operating in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been officially released.
The military personnel are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.
The forces, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had reached on 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 immediately offer details about how the personnel were equipped.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor 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 Greater Chicago region at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have accepted a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and release captured individuals and detained persons.
- News of the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Palestinian Americans.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a highly incorrect explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "political discussion" organized by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might more accurately described as partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- GOP senators voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been murdered by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.
