🔗 Share this article

Hello and welcome to the current updates in American political affairs. We begin with the report that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Troop Information

An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on background basis in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been officially released.

The troops are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and police officers, Northern Command stated publicly.

The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, had arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, approximately 90 kilometers 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 immediately offer information about how the personnel were equipped.

Background Situation

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.

"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect 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 started deployment in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Additional Developments

• The president announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• News of the Middle East deal was applauded by Republican lawmakers, 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 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem 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 provided statements at the White House "political discussion" organized 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 highly political manner, more akin to opposition research than neutral journalism.
• Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after opposition party tried to oppose the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats 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 left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: one.