Greetings and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We start with the report that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has begun guarding government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An unit 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 operational details that have not been made public.
The troops are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command stated publicly.
The forces, along with about 300 from Illinois, had reached on 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 two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. Trump's comments come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the Trump administration, despite opposition from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
- News of the Middle East deal was applauded by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Palestinian Americans.
- During presidential gathering, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called political content creators. The content producers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to opposition research than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: one.
