Greetings and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We begin with the news that a small number of state military forces has begun guarding government facilities in the Chicago area and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were working 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 operational details that have not been officially released.
The troops are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.
The forces, 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 60 days. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the personnel were equipped.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, charging them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's comments coincide with national guard troops have started deployment in the Chicago area at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.
Other Updates
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Palestinian Americans.
- During White House event, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'legal principle' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the government provide a public reason for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who provided statements 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 report on liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more akin to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in the Oregon city. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.
