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Hello and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We begin with the news that a limited contingent of National Guard troops has started protecting government facilities in the Chicago area and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Deployment Details

An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Chicago area, as stated by a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on background basis in order to reveal mission specifics that have not been made public.

The troops are in the city to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.

The troops, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, had arrived Tuesday at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles southwest of Chicago. All five hundred personnel are under the military command and have been activated for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide information about how the troops were armed.

Political Context

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

"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the Trump administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.

Other Updates

• Donald Trump announced that the conflicting parties have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• Reports about the Middle East deal was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be given the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
• During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
• All of the participants 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 neutral journalism.
• GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's ability to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after opposition party tried to counter the administration's extraordinary use of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's inaccurate statement 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: a single incident.