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Hello and welcome to NewsHour.
It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London.
I'm Tim Franks.
What began on Friday as demonstrations against new raids on undocumented migrants in downtown Los Angeles has over the past few days...
turned into something much, much bigger.
President Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard army reservists to the city over the objections of California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has raised angry protests from some about a heavy-handed overreach of presidential power,
an attempt to quash legitimate dissent, and a desire to fuel rather than tamp the flames.
Nonsense, says Mr. Trump and his many supporters.
Indeed, in the past half an hour or so,
President Trump has been taking questions from the media about the protests in L.A.,
and he has been defending his decision to deploy the National Guard and criticizing Governor Newsom.
He's an incompetent governor.
Look at the job he's doing in California.
He's destroying one of our great states.
And if I didn't get involved, if we didn't bring the Guard in,
and we would bring more in if we needed it, because we have to.
Make sure there's going to be law and order.
You had a disaster happening.
And they now admit it was a disaster.