Hello and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.
Deployment Details
An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Chicago area, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who spoke to 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 urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities 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 activated for two months. The official wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the troops were armed.
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 not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's comments come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.
Other Updates
- The president declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a highly incorrect explanation of the fundamental legal concept that mandates that the authorities provide a public reason 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 identified as freelance reporters who might better be called political content creators. The content producers report on leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
- GOP senators 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 government's extraordinary use of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
