🔗 Share this article

Hello and welcome to the latest updates in American political affairs. We start with the report that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Troop Information

An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on background basis in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been made public.

The military personnel are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.

The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, had arrived 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 two months. The official wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the troops were armed.

Political Context

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the imprisonment 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.

"The city's mayor should be in prison for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks come as state military forces have started deployment in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite opposition from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Additional Developments

• The president announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• News of the Middle East deal was applauded by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During presidential gathering, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'legal principle' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the fundamental legal concept that mandates that the government provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
• All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" hosted by the president on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on liberal demonstrations in a highly political manner, more akin to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans rejected a military authorization measure that would have limited 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 eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "political discussion" 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 accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.