State Military Troops Currently Guarding Federal Facilities in Greater Chicago Region, Authority Reports

Hello and welcome to the latest developments in US politics. We begin with the news that a small number of state military forces has started protecting federal property in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Troop Information

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 discuss 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 stated publicly.

The troops, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had reached on 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 activated for 60 days. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the personnel were equipped.

Background Situation

It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.

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

Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments coincide with national guard troops have started deployment in the Chicago area at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Other Updates

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• News of the Gaza agreement was applauded by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and referred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem 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 participants who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" hosted 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 partisan fashion, more similar to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans rejected 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 administration's extraordinary use of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.