🔗 Share this article

Greetings and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We start with the report that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has begun guarding government facilities in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Deployment Details

An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on background basis in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been made public.

The military personnel are in the urban area to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.

The troops, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had reached on Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, approximately 90 kilometers southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the military command and have been activated for 60 days. The official wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the troops were armed.

Political Context

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, 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 not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's remarks come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the order of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.

Other Updates

• Donald Trump announced that the conflicting parties have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities provide a official justification for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the participants who contributed testimony at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on liberal demonstrations in a highly political manner, more similar to political investigation than neutral journalism.
• Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to counter the administration's extraordinary use of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least a participant echoed Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The correct number of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.