Senate Democrats sought to pick apart the Trump administration’s legal rationale for sending National Guard troops and active Marines into Los Angeles this week in what they called a wildly out-of-proportion response to sometimes violent protests against President Trump’s escalating immigration sweeps.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) berated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during an Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the Pentagon’s budget plans, saying the actions were undermining the readiness of America’s military.

“You are deploying the American military to police the American people; you are sending the National Guard into California without the governor's request sending the Marines not after foreign threats, but after American protesters; and now President Trump........

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