Hello and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We begin with the report that a small number of National Guard troops 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 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 discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.
The troops 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 300 from Illinois, had reached on Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, approximately 90 kilometers southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days. The official wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the troops were armed.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing 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.
"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
- Reports about the Middle East deal was applauded by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
- 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 arresting and jailing people.
- All of the participants 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 political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure that would have limited Trump's authority to use lethal armed action 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 "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: one.
