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Hello and welcome to the latest updates in US politics. We start with the report that a small number of National Guard troops has begun guarding federal property in the Greater Chicago region and assisting law enforcement in Memphis on Wednesday, according to officials.

Troop Information

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

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 stated publicly.

The forces, 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 500 troops are under the military command and have been deployed for two months. The spokesperson wasn't able to quickly provide details about how the personnel were equipped.

Background Situation

It comes as Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago's mayor, and JB Pritzker, the state governor, charging them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

"The city's 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 remarks come as state military forces have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the direction of the Trump administration, despite objections from state authorities, including the governor and mayor.

Other Updates

• The president announced that the conflicting parties have agreed to a provisional agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and free Israeli hostages and detained persons.
• Reports about the Middle East deal was praised by Republican lawmakers, who urged Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize this week, but received with greater caution by Arab-American communities.
• During presidential gathering, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the term 'Habeas Corpus' and deferred to Kristi Noem. In May, Noem gave a wildly inaccurate definition of the fundamental legal concept that requires that the government provide a official justification for detaining and imprisoning people.
• All of the participants who provided statements at the White House "political discussion" organized by the president on Wednesday were self-described independent journalists 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.
• GOP senators voted down a military authorization measure that would have checked Trump's ability to use deadly military force against alleged narcotics traffickers after Democrats tried to oppose the administration's unprecedented deployment of the military to eliminate vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
• During the White House "antifa roundtable" on Wednesday, at least a participant echoed Trump's false claim 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.