Hello and welcome to the latest developments in US politics. We start with the report that a limited contingent of state military forces has started protecting government facilities 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 spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been officially released.
The troops are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties and law enforcement personnel, 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, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days. The official wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"Chicago Mayor should be in prison for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments coincide with national guard troops have started deployment in the Chicago area at the order of the federal administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have accepted a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- News of the Middle East deal was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
- During White House event, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'legal principle' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a highly incorrect definition of the core legal principle that mandates 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 political content creators. The content producers report on 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 ability to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after opposition party tried to oppose the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
