Hello and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We begin with the report that a small number of state military forces has begun guarding government facilities 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 operating in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to reveal operational details that have not been made public.
The troops are in the urban area to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties and police officers, 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 military command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the personnel were equipped.
Political Context
It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"The city's mayor should be in prison for failing to protect ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments 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.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump announced that the conflicting parties have accepted a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
- Reports about the Middle East deal was applauded by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
- During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the participants who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might more accurately described as partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more similar to opposition research than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's ability to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after opposition party tried to oppose the administration's unprecedented deployment of the military 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 left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.
