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Article snippet: Democrats are set to grill the Pentagon about the troop deployment to the U.S.-Mexico border amid what are expected to be contentious negotiations over border security funding to keep the government open. The House Armed Services Committee’s first hearing of the new Congress, scheduled for Tuesday morning, will see lawmakers question John Rood, under secretary of Defense for policy, and Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, director of operations for the Joint Staff, about the “Department of Defense’s Support to the Southern Border.” The hearing comes days after the end of a partial government shutdown over MORE’s demands for money for his proposed border wall and the possibility that he will declare a national emergency in three weeks if funding negotiations do not go his way. Declaring a national emergency could unlock Pentagon funding to be used for the wall. But Democrats have lambasted that idea as executive overreach and warned it would raid military coffers at a time when readiness is shaky. “I don’t think there is an emergency even under the 1976 law, so there would immediately be a lawsuit,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman MORE (D-Wash.) said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers,” referring to the National Emergencies Act. “So taking billions of dollars out of the Pentagon’s military construction budget would be a big problem. There’s bipartisan opposition to it.” U.S. troops were first deployed to the border last year shortly before the midterm elections as Trump fixate... Link to the full article to read more