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Greetings and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We start with the news that a small number of state military forces has begun guarding federal property in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Troop Information

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 communicated with the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.

The military personnel are in the urban area to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other government properties and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command said online.

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 military command and have been activated for 60 days. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer information about how the personnel were equipped.

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.

"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting Ice Officers!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"

Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's remarks come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Other Updates

• Donald Trump declared that the conflicting parties have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
• News of the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who called on Trump to be given the peace award this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and referred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the fundamental legal concept that mandates that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the witnesses who provided statements at the White House "political discussion" organized by the president on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might more accurately described as partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more akin to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans rejected a war powers resolution that would have checked Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been murdered by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.