Greetings and welcome to the latest developments in US politics. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.
Troop Information
An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to reveal operational details that have not been officially released.
The military personnel are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command stated publicly.
The troops, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had arrived 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 details 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 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 his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's remarks coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the order of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.
Additional Developments
- The president declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
- News of the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During presidential gathering, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'legal principle' and referred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem gave a highly incorrect definition of the fundamental legal concept that requires 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 content producers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
- Senate Republicans rejected a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
