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Hello and welcome to the most recent developments in US politics. We begin with the report that a limited contingent 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 two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the news agency on background basis in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.

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

The troops, 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 military command and have been activated for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the troops were armed.

Political Context

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, 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 prison for failing to protect 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 remarks come as state military forces have started deployment in the Greater Chicago region at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including the governor and mayor.

Additional Developments

• Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and release Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• News of the Gaza agreement was applauded by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be awarded the peace award this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a highly incorrect definition of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities 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 administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The content producers cover liberal demonstrations in a partisan fashion, more akin to opposition research than neutral journalism.
• GOP senators voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to use lethal armed action against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to oppose the government's extraordinary use of the armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean Sea.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that large numbers of people have been killed by political extremists in the Oregon city. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.