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Greetings and welcome to the current developments in US politics. We start with the report that a limited contingent of state military forces has started protecting federal property in the Greater Chicago region and supporting police operations in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Deployment Details

An unit of two hundred Texas military personnel were working in the Chicago area, according to a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, who communicated with the news agency on background basis in order to discuss mission specifics that have not been made public.

The military personnel are in the urban area to secure US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities 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.

Background Situation

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

"The city's mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE personnel!" Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"

Both the mayor and governor are Democrats. Trump's comments come as state military forces have started deployment in the Chicago area at the direction of the Trump administration, despite opposition from state authorities, including Pritzker and Johnson.

Additional Developments

• Donald Trump announced that Hamas and Israel have accepted a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and release captured individuals and Palestinian prisoners.
• News of the Middle East deal was praised by GOP legislators, who urged Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but greeted with more trepidation by Arab-American communities.
• During White House event, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to his homeland security secretary. In May, Noem gave a highly incorrect explanation of the core legal principle that requires that the government 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 content producers cover leftwing protests in a partisan fashion, more similar to political investigation than nonpartisan reporting.
• Senate Republicans voted down a military authorization measure 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 armed forces to destroy boats in the Caribbean.
• During the White House "political discussion" on Wednesday, at least one witness echoed Trump's inaccurate statement that significant amounts of people have been killed by political extremists in Portland, Oregon. The accurate count of killings by self-described "antifa" radicals in Portland is: one.