🔗 Share this article

Greetings and welcome to the most recent updates in US politics. We begin with the news that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has begun guarding government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Deployment Details

An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Greater Chicago region, as stated by 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 officially released.

The troops are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and law enforcement personnel, 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 five hundred personnel are under the military command and have been activated for two months. The official wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the personnel were equipped.

Political Context

It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.

"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Additional Developments

• Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
• Reports about the Middle East deal was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be given the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
• During White House event, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'legal principle' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a highly incorrect explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the government provide a official justification for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the president on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on liberal demonstrations in a highly political manner, more similar to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure that would have limited Trump's ability to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after opposition party tried to counter 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 one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The correct number of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.