🔗 Share this article

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 begun guarding government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Troop Information

An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Greater Chicago region, as stated by a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been made public.

The troops are in the urban area to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and police officers, Northern Command stated publicly.

The troops, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had arrived 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 quickly provide information about how the troops were armed.

Background Situation

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Additional Developments

• The president announced that Hamas and Israel have accepted a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• News of the Gaza agreement was applauded by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a highly incorrect explanation of the fundamental legal concept that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the witnesses who provided statements at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers report on liberal demonstrations in a highly political manner, more akin to opposition research than neutral journalism.
• GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's ability to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to oppose the government's extraordinary use of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been murdered by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The correct number of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.