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Hello and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We start with the report that a limited contingent of state military forces has begun guarding government facilities in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, as confirmed by authorities.

Deployment Details

An element of 200 Texas Guard troops were working in the Greater Chicago region, according to a representative 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 military personnel are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, Northern Command stated publicly.

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 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days. The official wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the troops were armed.

Background Situation

It coincides with Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the jailing of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's city leader, 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 not protecting ICE personnel!" Trump wrote on his social media platform on Wednesday morning. "The state governor also!"

Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats. Trump's comments coincide with national guard troops have begun arriving in the Greater Chicago region at the direction of the federal administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Additional Developments

• The president announced that Hamas and Israel have agreed to a provisional agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, and free captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
• Reports about the Gaza agreement was praised by GOP legislators, who called on Trump to be given the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'legal principle' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, the secretary gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the fundamental legal concept that requires that the authorities provide a official justification for arresting and jailing people.
• All of the witnesses who contributed testimony 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 influencers cover leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more akin to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's authority to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to counter the administration's unprecedented deployment of the military to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least one witness repeated Trump's false claim that significant amounts of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of fatal incidents by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: a single incident.