🔗 Share this article

Greetings and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We begin with the report that a small number of state military forces has started protecting government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Deployment Details

An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the Associated Press on background basis in order to discuss operational details that have not been officially released.

The military personnel are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and police officers, Northern Command stated publicly.

The forces, 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 quickly provide details about how the personnel were equipped.

Political Context

It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded 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.

"Chicago Mayor should be in prison for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the order of the Trump administration, despite opposition from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Other Updates

• Donald Trump declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and release captured individuals and detained persons.
• Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the fundamental legal concept that mandates that the government provide a public reason for arresting and jailing people.
• All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the president on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers cover liberal demonstrations 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 ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been killed by political extremists in the Oregon city. The correct number of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.