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Greetings and welcome to the current updates in American political affairs. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Deployment Details

An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on background basis in order to reveal operational details that have not been officially released.

The military personnel are in the urban area to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.

The forces, 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 Northern Command and have been activated for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the troops were armed.

Background Situation

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

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

Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's remarks coincide with state military forces have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.

Other Updates

• Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have accepted a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• Reports about the Gaza agreement was applauded by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a highly incorrect definition of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
• All of the participants who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the president on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called political content creators. The influencers report on liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more akin to opposition research than neutral journalism.
• GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use lethal armed action 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 echoed Trump's false claim that significant amounts 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.