WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers who oversee armed services policy split along party lines Thursday when examining the deployments of the National Guard to cities across the country under what President Donald Trump describes as a crime-fighting strategy.

Members of the Senate Committee on the Armed Services questioned for nearly two-and-a-half hours high-level Department of Defense officials, including the Pentagon’s No. 2 lawyer and the head of U.S. Northern Command who oversees National Guard troops under federal deployment.

The hearing on Capitol Hill came less than one month after a gunman shot two West Virginia National Guard members in broad daylight outside a Washington, D.C., Metro station just blocks from the White House.

U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died of her injuries the

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