🔗 Share this article

Greetings and welcome to the latest developments in American political affairs. We begin with the news that a small number of National Guard troops has begun guarding government facilities in the Chicago area and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Troop Information

An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were operating in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the Associated Press on background basis in order to discuss operational details that have not been officially released.

The troops are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.

The forces, 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 military command and have been activated for 60 days. The official wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the troops were armed.

Background Situation

It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

"The city's mayor should be in prison for failing to protect ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's remarks coincide with national guard troops have started deployment in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Additional Developments

• Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have accepted a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
• Reports about the Gaza agreement was applauded by GOP legislators, 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 fundamental legal concept 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 "political discussion" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might more accurately described as political content creators. The content producers report on liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more akin to opposition research than neutral journalism.
• GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's authority to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's extraordinary use of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.