Hello and welcome to the current updates 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, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, as stated by a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on background basis in order to reveal 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 police officers, Northern Command said online.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, had arrived 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 deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, charging them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"Chicago Mayor should be in prison for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's comments come as national guard troops have started deployment in the Greater Chicago region at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
- News of the Middle East deal was applauded by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the government provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who provided statements at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
- Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's authority to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration'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 echoed Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
