Greetings and welcome to the latest updates in American political affairs. We start with the news that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Chicago area and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
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 officially released.
The military personnel are in the city to secure 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 arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been deployed for 60 days. The spokesperson 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 state governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's remarks come as national guard troops have started deployment in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.
Additional Developments
- The president declared that the conflicting parties have agreed to a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Palestinian Americans.
- During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
- Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's authority to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
