Hello 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 government facilities in the Chicago area and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Greater Chicago region, as stated by a representative for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the Associated Press on background basis in order to reveal operational details that have not been made public.
The military personnel are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties 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 five hundred personnel are under the military command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"
Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's comments come as state military forces have started deployment in the Chicago area at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that the conflicting parties have agreed to a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
- News of the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the peace award 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, Noem gave a highly incorrect definition of the fundamental legal concept that mandates that the authorities provide a public reason for arresting and jailing people.
- All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers cover leftwing protests 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 lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.
