Hello and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We start with the report that a limited contingent of state military forces has started protecting federal property in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Chicago area, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.
The troops are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.
The troops, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the troops were armed.
Political Context
It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's 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 Democrats. Trump's remarks come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.
Other Updates
- The president declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
- Reports about the Middle East deal was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
- During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the witnesses who provided statements at the White House "political discussion" organized by the administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers cover leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more akin to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
- Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's false claim that large numbers of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in the Oregon city. The accurate count of killings by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
