🔗 Share this article

Hello and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We begin with the news that a small number of state military forces has begun guarding federal property 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 operating in the Chicago area, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on background basis in order to discuss operational details that have not been officially released.

The military personnel are in the urban area to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties 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, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the military command and have been activated for two months. The official wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the troops were armed.

Political Context

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for 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 prison for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.

Additional Developments

• The president declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• News of the Middle East deal was applauded by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "political discussion" organized by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called political content creators. The influencers cover leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more similar to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans rejected a military authorization measure that would have limited Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to counter the government's extraordinary use of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.