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Hello and welcome to the current developments in American political affairs. We start with the news that a limited contingent of state military forces has started protecting government facilities in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Troop Information

An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the Associated Press on background basis in order to reveal operational details that have not been made public.

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

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

Political Context

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.

"The city's mayor should be in prison for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both Johnson and Pritzker are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks coincide with state military forces have started deployment in the Chicago area at the order of the federal administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Additional Developments

• The president declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
• News of the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During White House event, 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 core legal principle that requires that the authorities provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
• All of the witnesses who contributed testimony 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 content producers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
• GOP senators voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to counter the administration's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness 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 self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.