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Hello and welcome to the current developments in American political affairs. We start with the report that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Deployment Details

An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were operating in the Chicago area, as stated by a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details that have not been made public.

The military personnel are in the city 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 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 information about how the troops were armed.

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 Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"

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

Other Updates

• Donald Trump declared that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
• Reports about the Middle East deal was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
• During presidential gathering, 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 mandates that the government provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
• All of the participants who contributed testimony at the White House "political discussion" hosted by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might more accurately described as political content creators. The content producers report on leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
• GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's authority to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's extraordinary use of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" 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 political activists in Portland is: one.