Greetings and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We begin with the report that a small number of state military forces has begun guarding federal property in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.
Deployment Details
An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Chicago area, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on background basis in order to discuss operational details that have not been officially released.
The troops are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command stated publicly.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, 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 60 days. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in prison for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the order of the federal administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Other Updates
- Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and release captured individuals 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 received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
- During White House event, Trump appeared not to recognize 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 public reason 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 cover liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more similar to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's ability to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the government's extraordinary use of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
