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Greetings and welcome to the most recent 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, according to officials.

Deployment Details

An unit of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency 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) buildings and other government properties and police officers, Northern Command said online.

The forces, 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 two months. The official wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the personnel were equipped.

Political Context

It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

"The city's mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's comments come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Other Updates

• The president announced that the conflicting parties have agreed to a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and free captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
• News of the Middle East deal was applauded by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
• During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the fundamental legal concept that requires that the authorities provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the witnesses who provided statements 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 cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the administration's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean Sea.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's false claim that large numbers of people have been killed by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.