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Hello and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We begin with the news that a small number of state military forces has started protecting government facilities in the Chicago area and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Deployment Details

An element of two hundred Texas military personnel were operating in the Greater Chicago region, as stated by a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details that have not been made public.

The military personnel 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 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 deployed for two months. The official wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the personnel were equipped.

Political Context

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, accusing them of not protecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.

"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE personnel!" Trump posted on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"

Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments come as national guard troops have started deployment in the Chicago area 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 tentative deal to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free captured individuals and detained persons.
• News of the Middle East deal 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 presidential gathering, Trump appeared not to recognize the term 'legal principle' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the core legal principle that requires that the authorities provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "antifa roundtable" organized by the administration on Wednesday were identified as freelance reporters who might better be called partisan conservative social media influencers. The influencers report on 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 alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the government's unprecedented deployment of the armed forces to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least a participant 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 political activists in Portland is: a single incident.