Greetings and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We begin with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Troop Information
An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on background basis in order to discuss operational details that have not been officially released.
The troops are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.
The troops, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, 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 quickly provide details about how the troops were armed.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in prison for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's comments coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- The president declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the fundamental legal concept that requires that the authorities provide a official justification for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized 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 nonpartisan reporting.
- GOP senators voted down a military authorization measure that would have limited Trump's authority to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to oppose the government's extraordinary use of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.
