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Hello and welcome to the current updates in US politics. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has begun guarding government facilities in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement 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 communicated with the news agency on background basis in order to reveal operational details that have not been officially released.

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

Background Situation

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, charging them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.

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

Both the mayor and governor are members of the Democratic party. Trump's remarks come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.

Additional Developments

• The president declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release captured individuals and detained persons.
• News of the Middle East deal was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that requires that the government 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 administration on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers cover leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more similar to opposition research than neutral journalism.
• Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's extraordinary use of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least a participant repeated Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been killed by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: a single incident.