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Greetings and welcome to the latest updates in American political affairs. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Deployment Details

An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details that have not been made public.

The troops are in the urban area to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties 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 Northern Command and have been deployed for 60 days. The official wasn't able to quickly provide 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 city leader, 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 jail for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the order of the federal administration, despite opposition from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.

Additional Developments

• The president declared that the conflicting parties have agreed to a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and release captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
• Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Palestinian Americans.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and referred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers report on liberal demonstrations in a highly political manner, more similar to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant 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.