Greetings and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We start with the news 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, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.
The troops are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities 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, approximately 90 kilometers southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been activated for two months. The official wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the troops were armed.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.
Other Updates
- Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release captured individuals and detained persons.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was applauded by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be given 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 his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a highly incorrect definition of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the witnesses 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 cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
- Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's extraordinary use of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in the Oregon city. The correct number of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: one.
