Greetings and welcome to the current updates in American political affairs. We begin with the news that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Troop Information
An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been made public.
The troops are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command stated publicly.
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 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the troops were armed.
Background Situation
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing 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) personnel.
"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Other Updates
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
- News of the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Palestinian Americans.
- During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the fundamental legal concept that mandates that the government provide a public reason for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might more accurately described as political content creators. The content producers report on leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
- Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment 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 killed by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The correct number of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.
