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Hello and welcome to the latest developments in US politics. We begin with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Deployment Details

An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Chicago area, as stated by a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been officially released.

The military personnel are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.

The troops, 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 activated 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 imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

"The city's mayor should be in prison for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.

Additional Developments

• The president declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
• News of the Gaza agreement was applauded by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the fundamental legal concept 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 "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 cover liberal demonstrations 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 authority to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: one.