Hello and welcome to the most recent developments in US politics. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has begun guarding government facilities in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.
Deployment Details
An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the Associated Press on background basis in order to discuss operational details that have not been officially released.
The military personnel are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and police officers, 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, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the military command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the troops were armed.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's comments coincide with state military forces have started deployment in the Chicago area at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- The president declared that Hamas and Israel have accepted a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- News of the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be given the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
- During White House event, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a official justification for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called political content creators. The influencers 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 limited Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to oppose the government's extraordinary use of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean Sea.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's false claim 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.
