Greetings and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We begin with the news 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, as confirmed by authorities.
Deployment Details
An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were operating in the Chicago area, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been officially released.
The military personnel are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and police officers, Northern Command said online.
The forces, 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 Northern Command and have been deployed for 60 days. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the personnel were equipped.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor 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 Chicago area 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 tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- News of the Gaza agreement was applauded by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During White House event, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'Habeas Corpus' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a highly incorrect explanation of the core legal principle that requires that the authorities provide a public reason 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 influencers cover liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more similar to opposition research than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
