National Guard Troops Currently Protecting Federal Facilities in Chicago Area, Authority Says
Hello and welcome to the current updates in US politics. 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, according to officials.
Deployment Details
An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a representative for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.
The troops are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.
The forces, along with about 300 from Illinois, had arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the Northern Command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide details 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, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"
Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's remarks coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.
Additional Developments
- Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
- 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 presidential gathering, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'legal principle' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the fundamental legal concept that mandates that the authorities provide a official justification for detaining and imprisoning people.
- All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" hosted by the administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters 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 political investigation than neutral journalism.
- Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the government's extraordinary use of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
- During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant echoed Trump's false claim that large numbers of people have been killed by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.
