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Greetings and welcome to the latest updates in American political affairs. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has started protecting federal property in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Troop Information

An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on condition of anonymity in order to reveal operational details that have not been officially released.

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

The forces, along with about 300 from Illinois, 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 official wasn't able to immediately offer details about how the troops were armed.

Background Situation

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

"The city's mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's remarks coincide with state military forces have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.

Additional Developments

• Donald Trump declared that the conflicting parties have agreed to a tentative deal to end the fighting in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
• Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate explanation of the core legal principle that mandates that the authorities provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the witnesses who contributed testimony at the White House "antifa roundtable" hosted by the president on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called political content creators. The content producers cover leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more akin to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
• GOP senators rejected a military authorization measure that would have limited Trump's authority to use deadly military force against suspected drug smugglers after Democrats tried to counter the government's unprecedented deployment of the military 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 large numbers of people have been murdered by political extremists in the Oregon city. The correct number of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.