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Hello and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We start with the news that a small number of National Guard troops has begun guarding government facilities in the Chicago area and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Deployment Details

An element 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 background basis in order to discuss operational details 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 stated publicly.

The forces, along with about three hundred Illinois personnel, 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 activated for 60 days. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the troops were armed.

Political Context

It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

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

Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's comments come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite opposition from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.

Additional Developments

• The president declared that the conflicting parties have accepted a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• Reports about the Middle East deal was praised by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Palestinian Americans.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for arresting and jailing people.
• All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "political discussion" organized by the president on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
• GOP senators rejected a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's authority to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after opposition party tried to oppose the administration's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been murdered by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by political activists in Portland is: one.