Hello and welcome to the current updates in US politics. We start with the news that a limited contingent of state military forces has begun guarding government facilities in the Chicago area and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.
Troop Information
An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.
The military personnel are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command stated publicly.
The forces, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the troops were armed.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in prison for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments coincide with national guard troops have started deployment in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have accepted a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Palestinian Americans.
- During White House event, 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 requires that the authorities provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans rejected a military authorization measure that would have limited Trump's ability to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's extraordinary use of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
