Hello and welcome to the latest updates in American political affairs. We start with the news that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on background basis in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.
The military personnel are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.
The forces, along with about 300 from Illinois, had arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, approximately 90 kilometers southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been deployed for two months. The official wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE personnel!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. Trump's comments come as state military forces have started deployment in the Chicago area at the order of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have accepted a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and release captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
- 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 greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem gave a highly incorrect definition of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" hosted by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans rejected a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to oppose the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been murdered by left-wing radicals in the Oregon city. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
