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      US admiral to retire amid military strikes in Caribbean and tensions with Venezuela

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      Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced on social media.The admiral, Alvin Holsey, just took over the US military’s southern command late last year for a position that normally lasts three years.A source told Reuters that there had been tension between him and Hegseth as well as questions about whether he would be fired in the days leading up to the announcement.The New York Times reports that an unnamed US official said that Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats”.Hegseth, in his social media post, did not disclose the reason for Holsey’s plan “to retire at year’s end”.The post noted that Holsey began his career “through the NROTC program at Morehouse College in 1988”. Morehouse is a private, historically Black college in Atlanta.In February, Donald Trump abruptly fired the air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff, sidelining a history-making Black fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to purge the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2021, Holsey recorded a public service announcement urging Black Americans to get the Covid-19 vaccine. More

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      Trump ‘looking at all options’ amid threats to invoke Insurrection Act, Vance says

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      The White House is talking about invoking the Insurrection Act that would allow the deployment of military troops on US soil to quell domestic unrest amid legal challenges over the moves, JD Vance confirmed on Sunday.Vance was asked on NBC News’s Meet the Press whether Donald Trump was seriously considering invoking the emergency power to deploy national guard forces and even the US military in domestic settings.“The president’s looking at all of his options,” he said, adding that “we are talking about this because crime has gotten out of control in our cities”.Trump’s attempts to use federal national guard forces in Democratic-run cities has faced challenges in the courts, most notably in Chicago in recent days.The vice-president’s ominous remarks came days after Trump referred to the Insurrection Act from the Oval Office, bluntly stating: “If I had to enact it, I would do that.” Military forces are forbidden from engaging in law enforcement duties on home soil.But under the Insurrection Act, which was signed in 1807, the president can deploy them domestically in cases of insurrection or rebellion, violence that is preventing the functioning of federal laws.The power was used during the 1960s civil rights movement during clashes over desegregation of the south but since then has been very rarely activated. The last time a president called on it was in 1992 when the governor of California requested military aid from George HW Bush in response to civil unrest in Los Angeles.In Sunday’s Meet the Press interview, Vance said Trump “hasn’t felt he needed to” invoke the Insurrection Act up to this point. But he confirmed that it was among the tactics being considered as the administration continues to be stymied in federal courts from deploying federalised national guard forces in Democratic-run cities.Federal courts have blocked the White House from using troops in Oregon and Illinois. On Thursday a federal judge prohibited the deployment of federalised national guard personnel in Chicago, admonishing the administration that she had “seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of a rebellion in the state of Illinois”.National guard troops have been sent into Illinois by the Trump administration from both Texas and California but under the temporary court order cannot be put out into the streets.Vance told NBC News that options such as the Insurrection Act were being considered because “there are places in Chicago where people are afraid to take their children … for fear of gun violence, for fear of gang drive-by shootings”.In a separate interview with This Week on ABC News, Vance said that Chicago had been given over to “lawlessness and gangs” and had a murder rate “that rivals the worst places in the third world”.In fact, violent crime has been falling at unprecedented rates in America’s biggest cities including Chicago over the past two years. Chicago is not in the top four large US cities with the highest murder rates – all of whom are in states controlled by Republicans.As Vance did the rounds of Sunday’s political talkshows, tension between the Trump administration and the Democratic states it is targeting exploded across TV screens. The vice-president was repeatedly asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC News whether the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, had committed a crime that could see him being prosecuted by the Department of Justice as have several other of Trump’s “political enemies”.Vance skirted the question until he was pressed into saying: “He should suffer consequences. Whether he has violated a crime I would leave to the courts, but he has certainly violated his oath of office and that seems pretty criminal to me.”Pritzker responded to the veiled threat by accusing Vance of coming out with a “tidal wave of lies”. The governor told This Week that he was not intimidated by the prospect of prosecution as has befallen the former FBI director James Comey and the New York attorney general Letitia James, who have both been indicted in recent days.Pritzker said: “I am not afraid. Do I think he could do it? He might. But as I have said before, come and get me. I mean, you’re dead wrong, Mr President and Mr Vice-President, and I will stand up for the law and the constitution.”Raw emotions were widely on display across the TV studios as the federal government shutdown entered day 12. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, told Fox News Sunday that the crisis had been orchestrated by Democratic leaders in Congress as a partisan move “so that they can prove to their Marxist base that they are willing to fight Trump”.He said that after eight attempts to reopen the government had all failed in votes in the Senate, the shutdown was causing “real pain for real people – and the Democrats don’t seem to care”.On the same program, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, denied that the Democratic stance was partisan. “We will sit down with anyone, any time, any place, go back to the White House, to have a bipartisan discussion about reopening the government,” he said.The Democrats’ aim, Jeffries added, was to “improve the quality of life of the American people and address the healthcare crisis that threatens tens of millions of people across the country”. More

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      Trump news at a glance: US troops will be paid despite shutdown, president claims

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      Donald Trump claimed he had found a way to pay US military troops despite the federal government shutdown, saying he had instructed his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to release funds.Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: “I am using my authority, as commander-in-chief, to direct our secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our troops PAID on October 15.”The government shutdown began on 1 October and is the first since a 35-day closure that happened in December 2018 and extended into the new year during Trump’s first presidential term. There were close calls but no shutdowns during Joe Biden’s presidential term.Trump says military members will be paid despite shutdownThe US president said he had identified the funds to make the payments to troops happen, adding: “I will not allow the Democrats to hold our military, and the entire security of our nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous government shutdown. The radical left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT.”Read the full storyTrump and Egyptian president to chair Gaza peace summitDonald Trump and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, are due to chair a Gaza peace summit with several world leaders in Egypt’s Red Sea resort city of Sharm El Sheikh on Monday afternoon.The meeting will take place “with the participation of leaders from more than 20 countries”, the Egyptian presidency said.Read the full storyDemocrats refuse to fold over shutdown as Republican outrage buildsThe Democratic party is sticking to its guns on healthcare and says it is willing to hold out amid the government shutdown – much to the delight of its progressive supporters.Read the full storyNational guard troops in Illinois can remain but not deploy yet, judge rulesThe national guard troops Donald Trump sent to Illinois can remain in the state and under federal control but cannot be deployed, an appeals court ruled on Saturday.The appeals court granted a pause in the case until it can hear further arguments.Read the full storyTrump wants to seem pro-worker – but actions suggest otherwiseUnpaid forced leave and mass firings are hardly the first things to spring to mind as hallmarks of a golden age of the American worker.Yet these were the possibilities floated by Donald Trump this week as he addressed a government shutdown that began on 1 October and is showing no imminent sign of ending.Read the full storyHow Trump and allies are exploiting Kirk’s killingDonald Trump and Maga allies have capitalized on the killing of rightwing influencer Charlie Kirk to expand attacks on liberal groups, donors, Democrats, and others by tarring many critics as the “enemy within” and “radical left” in a move that legal scholars and historians call authoritarian and anti-democratic.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, along with Ivanka Trump, addressed a rally in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. Witkoff said Israeli hostages held in Gaza were coming home.

      The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will travel to Egypt on Monday for talks on the peace plan presented by Donald Trump to end the war in Gaza, the Élysée Palace said.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 10 October. More

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      Trump says military members will be paid despite government shutdown

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      Donald Trump claimed on Saturday that he has found a way to pay US military troops despite the ongoing federal government shutdown, saying he has instructed his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to release funds.Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: “I am using my authority, as commander-in-chief, to direct our secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our troops PAID on October 15.”Trump said he had identified the funds to make the payments happen, adding: “I will not allow the Democrats to hold our military, and the entire security of our nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous government shutdown. The radical left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT.”The recent federal government shutdown began on 1 October and is the first since a 35-day closure that happened in December 2018 and extended into the new year during Trump’s first presidential term. The shutdown came as Democrats were looking to regain their footing with voters, who re-elected Trump last year and relegated them to the minority in both chambers of Congress.More than 1.3 million military personnel across the country would not have received their first post-shutdown paychecks this month, only getting paid for the 21-30 September period. An estimated 750,000 federal employees have also been furloughed.As the Hill reported, however, federal workers are generally paid once a shutdown ends, whether they are furloughed or working. After the last shutdown in 2018, Congress wrote into law that federal workers must be paid once the government reopens.On Thursday, the US Senate remained deadlocked on legislation to end the shutdown, even as Trump repeated his threat to make Democrats pay for the funding lapse that has closed federal agencies and furloughed employees across the nation.Speaking to Punchbowl News, the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, expressed confidence in the strategy, saying: “Every day gets better for us.”The White House announced the layoffs of federal workers on Friday, following through with a threat it made to initiate the mass firings of government employees.A document filed with a federal court on Friday evening revealed that hundreds of layoffs took place across the executive branch, including about 315 at the Department of Commerce, 466 at the Department of Education and 187 at the Department of Energy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnion leaders warned the layoffs would have “devastating effects” on services relied upon by millions of Americans, and pledged to challenge the moves in court.“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 federal and DC government workers.After Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that “RIFs have begun”, referring to the government’s reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go, the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, responded, saying: “America’s unions will see you in court.”In a repost of Trump’s delivery of the news that he proposes to pay the military by 15 October, Hegseth responded: “President Trump delivers for the troops.” More

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      National guard begins Memphis patrols as senators in Illinois are turned away from Ice facility

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      As national guard troops patrolled in Memphis – Tennessee’s second-largest city – for the first time on Friday, Democratic US senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth said they had been barred from visiting an immigration enforcement building near Chicago.The senators stopped by the facility in suburban Broadview on Friday, requesting a tour of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility and to deliver supplies to protesters who have been demonstrating at the site for weeks.Their visit coincides with a ruling that the fencing installed at the site must be taken down. A federal judge late Thursday ordered Ice to remove an 8ft-tall (2.4 meters) fence outside the Broadview facility after the Village of Broadview said it illegally blocks a public street.Both senators spoke to the local NBC News affiliate while there and have pushed for answers and called for oversight into the conditions inside the facility.“We just want to go in and look at the facility and see what the conditions are and they would not let us in. It is shameful,” Duckworth said.“They’ve refused to tell us this information,” Durbin stated. “I’ve done this job for a few years now, I’ve never had this stonewalling by any presidential administration.”“What are you afraid of?” Duckworth said to reporters, referring to the government. “You don’t hide, you don’t run away when you’re proud of what you’re doing.”The senators said they have congressional oversight authority.“Something is going on in there they don’t want us to see,” Durbin said. “I don’t know what it is.”To the south, in Tennessee, at least nine armed guard members began their patrol at the Bass Pro Shops located at the Pyramid, a Memphis landmark, about a mile (1.6km) from historic Beale Street and FedExForum, where the NBA’s Grizzlies play.View image in fullscreenThey also were at a nearby tourist welcome center along the Mississippi River. Wearing guard fatigues and protective vests labeled “military police”, the troops were escorted by a local police officer and posed for photos with visitors.Trump has sent or discussed sending troops to other cities as well, including Baltimore; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The federal government says the troops support immigration agents and protect federal property.The guard troops in Memphis remain under the command of the Republican governor, Bill Lee, who supports their use to further a federal crackdown on crime.By contrast, Trump has attempted to deploy national guard troops – including some from Texas and California – in Portland and Chicago after taking control of them himself, over objections from state and local leaders who say such interference violates their sovereignty and federal law. Federal courts in Illinois and Oregon this week blocked Trump’s efforts to send troops out in those cities.The US district judge April Perry in Chicago said the Trump administration had violated the 10th amendment, which grants certain powers to states, and the 14th amendment, which assures due process and equal protection, when he ordered national guard troops to that city.In a written order Friday explaining her rationale, Perry noted the nation’s long aversion to having military involvement in domestic policing.“Not even the Founding Father most ardently in favor of a strong federal government” – referring to Alexander Hamilton – “believed that one state’s militia could be sent to another state for the purposes of political retribution,” Perry wrote.“The court confirmed what we all know: there is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the national guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago,” the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, said.An earlier court battle in Oregon delayed a similar troop deployment to Portland. The 9th US circuit court of appeals heard arguments in that case Thursday.Lt Cmdr Teresa Meadows, a spokesperson for US northern command, said the troops sent to Portland and Chicago are “not conducting any operational activities at this time”. More

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      US to send 200 troops to Israel to support and monitor ceasefire deal, reports say

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      US troops have been sent to Israel as part of the peace deal approved on Thursday to support and help monitor the ceasefire, according to multiple news reports.Senior US officials told reporters that 200 troops will initially be on the ground with a “civil-military coordination center” operated by US Central Command to help facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid as well as logistical and security assistance into the territory wracked by two years of war, the Associated Press reported, citing two officials who confirmed the report on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not authorized for release.Reuters and ABC News also reported on military troops being sent to Israel.The troops are part of a broader team that also includes partner nations, non-governmental organizations and private-sector entities there to help monitor the peace deal and the transition to a civilian government in Gaza, US officials said.US service members have already begun arriving in the region from around the globe, according to one of the officials, and will continue to travel to the region over the weekend to begin planning and establishing the center. American troops will not be sent into Gaza, they said, and the coordination center will be staffed by about 200 US service members who have expertise in transportation, planning, security, logistics and engineering.Israel and Hamas agreed to pause hostilities in Gaza on Thursday, a deal Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social network, saying it was the first step to “Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace”. Many questions remain on next steps, including Hamas disarmament, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and a future government in the territory.Both sides agreed to a hostage-prisoner exchange that would free about 20 Israeli hostages believed to still be alive and the remains of others who have died, and roughly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails.Israeli bombs continued to land in Gaza, killing a reported 30 people after the deal was announced on Wednesday, but Palestinians celebrated in the rubble-strewn streets left devastated by the war, even as strikes continued.More than 2 million people have been displaced in Gaza, and humanitarian officials eagerly awaited permission from Israel to deliver badly needed aid there. From March to May this year, Israel imposed a total blockade of supplies into the area, and famine was declared in parts of Gaza in August. Only 20% of the aid needed has been delivered over the last several months, according to the UN, which said roughly 170,000 metric tons of food, medicine and other supplies is ready for distribution.After the announcement on Wednesday, the UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, called for all of Gaza’s entry points to open so aid could be delivered at “a much, much greater scale”.“Given the level of needs, the level of starvation, the level of misery and despair, will require a massive collective effort, and that’s what we’re mobilized for,” Fletcher told AP. “We are absolutely ready to roll and deliver at scale.”More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since the war began, most of them civilians. Roughly another 169,000 have been injured. The collapse of health systems, schools and access to food has also taken a severe toll, with at least 400 additional deaths related to malnutrition, according to the UN, including more than 100 children. Only 1.5% of cropland in Gaza has been left able to be farmed, with water and soil left polluted by munitions and fires.As Israel’s forces withdraw, part of the agreed-upon process that will leave them 53% of the territory, according to an Israeli government spokesperson, questions remain about how the next steps to provide stabilization and reconstruction will unfold.The remarks from US officials provide some of the first details on how the ceasefire deal would be monitored and how the US military would have a role in that effort.Jason Burke and the Associated Press contributed to this story More

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      Senate Republicans vote against check on Trump using deadly force against cartels

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      Senate Republicans voted down legislation Wednesday that would have put a check on Donald Trump’s ability to use deadly military force against drug cartels after Democrats tried to counter the administration’s extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers to destroy vessels in the Caribbean.The vote fell mostly along party lines, 48-51, with two Republicans, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voting in favor and the Democrat John Fetterman voting against.It was the first vote in Congress on Trump’s military campaign, which according to the White House has so far destroyed four vessels, killed at least 21 people and stopped narcotics from reaching the US. The war powers resolution would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes on the cartels.The Trump administration has asserted that drug traffickers are armed combatants threatening the United States, creating justification to use military force. But that assertion has been met with some unease on Capitol Hill.Some Republicans are asking the White House for more clarification on its legal justification and specifics on how the strikes are conducted, while Democrats insist they are violations of US and international law. It’s a clash that could redefine how the world’s most powerful military uses lethal force and set the tone for future global conflict.The White House had indicated Trump would veto the legislation, and even though the Senate vote failed, it gave lawmakers an opportunity to go on the record with their objections to Trump’s declaration that the US is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels.“It sends a message when a significant number of legislators say: ‘Hey, this is a bad idea,’” said the senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who pushed the resolution alongside Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California.Wednesday’s vote was brought under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which was intended to reassert congressional power over the declaration of war.“Congress must not allow the executive branch to become judge, jury and executioner,” Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has long pushed for greater congressional oversight of war powers, said during a floor speech.Paul was the only Republican to publicly speak in favor of the resolution before the vote, but a number of Republican senators have questioned the strikes on vessels and said they are not receiving enough information from the administration.The senator Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, acknowledged “there may be some concern” in the Republican conference about the strikes. However, Republican leaders stridently argued against the resolution on the Senate floor Wednesday, calling it a political ploy from Democrats.“People were attacking our country by bringing in poisonous substances to deposit into our country that would have killed Americans,” said the senator Jim Risch, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee. “Fortunately most of those drugs are now at the bottom of the ocean.”Risch thanked Trump for his actions and added that he hoped the military strikes would continue.Members of the Senate armed services committee received a classified briefing last week on the strikes, and Cramer said he was “comfortable with at least the plausibility of their legal argument”. But, he added, no one representing intelligence agencies or the military command structure for Central and South America was present for the briefing.“I’d be more comfortable defending the administration if they shared the information,” he said.Kaine also said the briefing did not include any information on why the military chose to destroy the vessels rather than interdict them or get into the specifics of how the military was so confident the vessels were carrying drugs.“Maybe they were engaged in human trafficking, or maybe it was the wrong ship,” Schiff said. “We just have little or no information about who was onboard these ships or what intelligence was used or what the rationale was and how certain we could be that everyone on that ship deserved to die.”The Democrats also said the administration has told them it is adding cartels to a list of organizations deemed “narco-terrorists” that are targets for military strikes, but it has not shown the lawmakers a complete list.“The slow erosion of congressional oversight is not an abstract debate about process,” the senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, said in a floor speech. “It is a real and present threat to our democracy.”The secretary of state Marco Rubio visited the Republican conference for lunch Wednesday to emphasize to senators that they should vote against the legislation. He told the senators that the administration was treating cartels like governmental entities because they had seized control of large portions of some Caribbean nations, according to the senator John Hoeven of North Dakota.Rubio told reporters at the Capitol: “These drug-trafficking organizations are a direct threat to the safety and security of the United States to unleash violence and criminality on our streets, fueled by the drugs and the drug profits that they make. … And the president, as the commander in chief, has an obligation to keep our country safe.”Still, Democrats said the recent buildup of US maritime forces in the Caribbean was a sign of shifting US priorities and tactics that could have grave repercussions. They worried that further military strikes could set off a conflict with Venezuela and argued that Congress should be actively deliberating whenever American troops are sent to war.Schiff said, “This is the kind of thing that leads a country, unexpectedly and unintentionally, into war.” More

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      Judge refuses to block Trump’s deployment of national guard to Illinois

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      A federal judge will not immediately block national guard troops from being deployed in Illinois after a lawsuit from the state against the president on Monday.Troops from Texas could be deployed to Chicago later this week, and Trump is also seeking to federalize the Illinois’national guard. A similar effort to deploy troops to Portland was blocked by a judge in Oregon.Illinois sued the Trump administration on behalf of the state and the city of Chicago on Monday after the president ordered national guard troops to deploy in the state against the governor’s wishes.The Illinois attorney general, Kwame Raoul, filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Donald Trump from calling up the state’s national guard or sending in troops from other states “immediately and permanently”.“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit says.Trump has gone after Democratic-led cities, sending in military to clamp down on protests and aid in his deportation agenda. He has declared war on Chicago, threatening for weeks to send in more troops while immigration agents scoured the city for people to deport, and local residents protested against his crackdown.Raoul argues that these efforts to send in guard troops against a state’s will infringe upon the state’s sovereignty and self-governance while leading to unrest and harm for the state’s residents.“It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police. It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisians but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue,” Raoul wrote.Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, said the Trump administration had not discussed plans to federalize the state’s national guard or to send in troops from other states.“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” he said in a statement. “It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois national guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”A Trump-appointed judge in Oregon blocked Trump from sending in troops to Portland. Governor Gavin Newsom of California is also fighting against troops being sent from his state to Oregon. Troops from Texas were going to be sent to Portland and Chicago, with the blessing of Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott.Trump administration officials have railed against the ruling, saying a judge cannot prevent the president from moving troops. “Today’s judicial ruling is one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen – and is yet the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the 2024 election by fiat,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X.Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, also signed an executive order to prohibit federal immigration agents from using city-owned property to conduct their operations, which comes after “documented use” of public school parking lots and a city-owned lot as staging sites, Johnson said in a press release.“We will not tolerate Ice agents violating our residents’ constitutional rights nor will we allow the federal government to disregard our local authority. ICE agents are detaining elected officials, tear-gassing protestors, children, and Chicago police officers, and abusing Chicago residents. We will not stand for that in our city,” Johnson said in a statement.At a press briefing on Monday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that cities like Chicago were refusing to cooperate with troops because they don’t like the president. She claimed Trump wants to make cities safer.“You guys are framing this like the president wants to take over the American cities with the military,” she said. “The president wants to help these local leaders who have been completely ineffective in securing their own cities.” More