Hello and welcome to the most recent updates in US politics. We start with the news that a small number of National Guard troops has begun guarding federal property in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss 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 law enforcement personnel, Northern Command stated publicly.
The forces, 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 military command and have been activated for 60 days. The official wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the troops were armed.
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 not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform 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 Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
- News of the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities 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 president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called political content creators. The content producers report on liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more akin to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to oppose the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean Sea.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in the Oregon city. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
