Greetings and welcome to the current developments in American political affairs. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Greater Chicago region 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 discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.
The troops are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.
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 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for 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) officers.
"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments come as state military forces have started deployment in the Chicago area at the order of the federal administration, despite objections from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
- Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and referred 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 arresting and jailing 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 partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more akin to political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats 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 one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been murdered by left-wing radicals in the Oregon city. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.
