Greetings 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 Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on background basis in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been officially released.
The troops are in the urban area to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, 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 deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the troops were armed.
Political Context
It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in prison for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks come as national guard troops have started deployment in the Chicago area at the order of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be awarded 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 Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that requires that the authorities provide a official justification for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the participants 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 content producers report on leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the administration's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been killed by political extremists in the Oregon city. The correct number of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.
