Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Not-so-happy meals

Axios reported in late October that despite bead “vibes” about the economy, “Consumers are buying higher-priced drinks, pickup trucks and more — a signal from corporate America that the economy appears to be chugging along just fine.” But who are the consumers out buying higher-priced items and propping up spending?

Best Buy’s CEO Corie Barry told reporters last week that “the top 40% of all U.S. consumers are driving two-thirds of all consumption.“

Axios reports that “… Coca-Cola warned that higher-income consumers might be helping hold the line on spending as lower-income shoppers pull back — a months-long economic trend that could be worsening.”

A Facebook post alerted me to the other side of the story. The Los Angeles Times story from mid-November paints a different story. Here are the leading bullets:

• McDonald’s prices have risen so high at the iconic fast food chain that traffic from one of its core customer bases, low-income households, has dropped by double digits.
• The low-income customers at McDonald’s are quickly being replaced by higher-earners, according to company officials.
• The change demonstrates the pressure facing low-income consumers who are being squeezed by higher housing, clothes and child-care costs.

The Times continues:

McDonald’s executives say the higher costs of restaurant essentials, such as beef and salaries, have pushed food prices up and driven away lower-income customers who are already being squeezed by the rising cost of groceries, clothes, rent and child care.

With prices for everything rising, consumer companies concerned about the pressures on low-income Americans include food, automotive and airline businesses, among others, said analyst Adam Josephson. “The list goes on and on,” he said.

“Happy Meals at McDonald’s are prohibitively expensive for some people, because there’s been so much inflation,” Josephson said.

It’s not just fast food.

A recent earnings report from Delta offers yet another illustration. While Delta’s main cabin revenue fell 5% for the June quarter compared to a year ago, premium ticket sales rose 5%, highlighting the divide between affluent customers and those forced to be more economical.

At hotel chains, luxury brands are holding up better than low budget options. Revenue at brands including Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis is up 2.9% so far this year, while economy hotels saw a 3.1% decline for the same period, according to industry tracker CoStar.

This is why the “K-shaped” economy is making news. HIgher-income Americans are seeing their incomes and wealth increase while “lower-income households struggling with weaker income gains and steep prices,” the Associated Press reported on Monday:

Growth appears solid, yet hiring is sluggish and the unemployment rate has ticked up. Overall consumer spending is still rising, but Americans are less confident. AI-related data center construction is soaring while factories are laying off workers and home sales are weak. And the stock market still hovers near record highs even as wage growth is slowing.

Donald Trump and Mar-a-Lago billionaires are holding lavish, Great Gatsby-themed costume parties and dining on “beef filet, truffle dauphinoise, pan-seared scallops and a trio of desserts including ‘Trump chocolate cake’” while the peasants seeing “Trump cuts” to their SNAP benefits cannot afford a Happy Meal. That is, when they are not fleeing deportation by masked Trump-Noem-Miller immigration raiders.

The Times adds:

A report released this year by researchers with Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University found that half of all renters, 22.6 million people, were cost-burdened in 2023, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing and utilities, up 3.2 percentage points since 2019 and 9 percentage points since 2001. Twenty-seven percent of renters are severely burdened, spending more than 50% of their income on housing.

As rents have grown, the amount families have left over after paying for housing and utilities has fallen to record lows. In 2023, renters with annual household incomes under $30,000 had a median of just $250 per month in residual income to spend on other needs, an amount that’s fallen 55% since 2001, with the steepest declines since the pandemic, according to the Harvard study.

“This is not an income gap. It is a widening fault line,” posted a social media manager on Facebook:

The McDonald’s warning is not a blip. It is a symptom of a society that has drained its middle class to keep its upper class afloat. It is a sign of a country running on the last reserve tank of its promise. And it is a sign of what happens when generations are told to work harder for less while being blamed for struggling inside a system designed to keep them there.

If the most affordable food in the country is slipping out of reach, the question is no longer whether the economy is in danger. The question is how much longer the center can hold before it gives way entirely.

(h/t LS)

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

BREAKING: Trump and Hegseth ‘unserious’

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “are not serious people,” Sen. Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat, told “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on Sunday. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey called Hegseth “an unserious man” on “Morning Joe” on Monday in responding to the meme Hegseth posted, an AI-generated image of Franklin the Turtle, a children’s book character, launching a rocket-propelled grenade against narco-terrorists in boats. (The book’s publisher has condemned Hegseth’s appropriation of Franklin’s name and image.)

This is not really breaking news. Trump is an emotionally stunted man-child, mentally unstable, amoral, deeply insecure, needy, venal, vain and vengeful, pathological liar and con man who has lived his entire life on the edge of the law (and outside it) using his father’s fortune to shield himself, and now the U.S. Supreme Court. All but the last was true before unserious Americans elected Trump president and he delivered that “American carnage” inauguration speech in January 2017 that former President George W. Bush described as “some weird shit.”

With Trump now in serious mental and political decline not one year into a second term, the United States of America looks to the rest of the planet as a deeply unserious country. With his on-again, off-again tariffs, his cabinet-load of cranks, and attempts to sell out Ukraine to Russia, Trump is quadrupling down on unserious.

Daily Beast this morning reports that Trump’s Truth Social account Monday night posted “over 160 times between 7:09 p.m. ET and 11:57 p.m. ET, with most posts shared twice. At one point the president was firing off more than a post a minute.” Many were reposts of others’ content, but Trump included some of his own targeting his usual list of enemies.

What serious world leader does that? What serious CEO does that?

For that matter, what world leader hires a weekend TV host with a drinking problem, a “kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” ethos, and the immaturity revealed in the image at the top of this post to lead the world’s largest military? Or hires a vaccine crank to run his national health agency? Or men who don’t seem to understand economics to stand before cameras and spew economic inanities on his behalf? Or selects a psychopath as his chief advisor? Or puts a Christian nationalist in charge of dismantling the government he’s charged with leading? Or redecorates the storied Oval Office to look like Liberace’s bedroom?

If one were to conceive a plan for reducing the world’s last superpower and guarantor of world peace to a laughingstock, would it look any different from this Trump administration?

Update: Speaking of unserious.

Phillip: And now the Trump administration is saying that they care so much about stopping drugs from coming into the country, that they're going to bomb the guys on a fishing boat, but set free the guy who ran the cartel? pic.twitter.com/MQeZRX7nRc

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 2, 2025

2nd Update: Edited for clarity “With Trump now in serious mental and political decline….” (h/t DZ)

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Interesting that this report, via Salon, was leaked to the NY Post. Is Newscorp going rogue?

A damning report from active-duty and retired FBI agents, released on Sunday, said that Director Kash Patel is “in over his head.”

The report from the 24 agents, entitled “A Pulse Check of the First Six Months,” was obtained by the New York Post. It finds that morale is low at the department, described as a “rudderless ship” under Patel. The report found Patel “has neither the breadth of experience nor the bearing an FBI director needs to be successful.”

One source in the report called Patel “very personable and likable,” but blamed him for creating “a culture of mistrust and uncertainty among the ranks.” Another said that leaders at the FBI are “keeping their heads down and are afraid to say anything.”

“They do not want to be terminated from employment,” the source said.

The courage they are showing is so impressive. I feel so safe.

Patel is a clown:

One anecdote from the report claims that when Patel traveled to Utah following the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, he “refused” to leave his plane without wearing an FBI raid jacket.

FBI agents who “were busy working in the aftermath of the assassination…had to [stop and] ask around to find an FBI raid jacket – a medium-sized one – that would fit FBI Director Kash Patel,” according to the report. When “two velcro patches” were found to be missing from the jacket, two agents removed their own patches and “ran” them over to Patel’s aircraft.

The weirdness of this crew’s obsession with cos-playing never fails to amaze. Normally, the only time you ever see an FBI Director is when he testifies before Congress. That’s it. He doesn’t show up at crimes scenes, very rarely gives a briefing and is simply not a front-facing official. Patel, Hegseth and Noem especially are the most inept buffoons we’ve ever seen in such important powerful jobs and they are everywhere. Of course, you only have to look at their boss to know that the buck stops there.

I am quite sure that most of you have not bothered to spend any money following the ongoing Olivia Nuzzi-Ryan Lizza-RFK Jr. saga (neither have I) but if you’re on social media at all you know it’s out there. And it’s almost unfathomably gross. If you do have some curiosity about the whole thing but don’t really understand what’s going on, I recommend this rundown. You won’t be able to get those minutes back but maybe it will at least clear up what the fuss is all about. It’s a stunning indictment of our decadent political and media culture.

I’ll just say this: Bobby Jr’s blow job poem made me want to pour bleach in my eyes. Not because of the blow job itself. But because he forces her to do it, even holding her nose, while calling her “my love.” I think he might be a serial killer.

Trump literally phoned in a rally today, which Mike Johnson shared on social media. This piece by Jonathan Lemire is the first I’ve seen that really delves into the second term bubble:

[I]t has been many months since Trump hosted a full-on campaign-style rally. He has opted instead to travel abroad, golf at his private clubs, and dine with wealthy friends, business leaders, and major donors. Beyond the rallies, Trump has dramatically scaled back speeches, public events, and domestic travel compared with the first year of his initial term. And that lack of regular voter contact has contributed to a growing fear among Republicans and White House allies: that Trump is too isolated, and has become out of touch with what the public wants from its president.

Every president, of course, deals with being in a bubble, distanced by the demands on his time and the extraordinary security concerns that come with the office. But in his return to the presidency this year, Trump has seldom ventured across the country to anywhere other than his own clubs. He also inhabits something of a news silo, watching far-right cable channels such as One America News Network and Newsmax along with Fox News. Even his social-media consumption has become narrower: Instead of being on the app formerly known as Twitter, where he’d occasionally encounter contrary views, he now posts solely on Truth Social, which he owns and where he is surrounded by sycophants. And his own White House staff, this time largely populated by true believers and yes-men (and a few yes-women), only adds to the echo chamber.

Everyone around Trump, and everything he is seeing on TV and on his phone, is telling him that he’s right. But poll after poll suggests that Americans believe Trump is now getting it wrong and has lost focus on what got him elected.

“People voted for him to lower prices, to bring manufacturing back, to stand up to those taking advantage of them,” a close Trump ally told me on the condition of anonymity so as not to antagonize the president. “They didn’t vote for him to build a damn gilded ballroom. He’s not hearing them.”

He’s not hearing them, perhaps, because he’s not seeing them. I looked at Trump’s travel schedule from the fall of 2017, the first year of his initial term, to compare it with this fall’s, and I was surprised by the drop-off. Back then, he traveled into the country more than a dozen times from September to November to talk with energy workers in North Dakota, rally support in Alabama for a Senate candidate, and explain his agenda directly to his supporters. During that same stretch this year, he barely traveled at all. This fall, he’s ventured beyond the Washington, D.C., metro area; his New Jersey golf club; and Florida, the home of Mar-a-Lago, only five times. Four of those domestic trips were to New York, including three to hang out with rich friends in luxury boxes at sporting events. The other was to attend United Nations meetings, but he stayed only one night, compared with five in 2017. The fifth trip was to Arizona, to attend Charlie Kirk’s memorial service.

Even the one realm where Trump expanded his travel took him away from Americans; this fall, he made three international trips, as opposed to just one eight autumns ago. Some of his most loyal MAGA supporters, such as Laura Loomer and Steven Bannon, urged him to curb the globe-trotting and instead focus on issues at home. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she “would like to see Air Force One parked and staying at home” (she later renounced her support of Trump and announced her resignation from Congress). Trump’s lack of travel across the United States, some allies fear, has knocked his political antenna askew.

In his first term he took a whole “victory tour” of rallies around the country where they had voted for him. It was weird, to say the least. But he always seemed to get sustenance from these events and did calibrate his policies based upon the responses he would get there. He has not done a real “Trump rally” since he was elected this time. You get the sense that even at his smaller, controlled events he’s flagging in energy.

And it’s clear that he’s not well informed by anything much less his base. He famously hates to be briefed and often these days when the media asks questions it’s clear he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Sometimes he even punts the question to one of his henchmen. I think Lemire is right — he just hears from rich people who have his ear and the trusted circle of sycophantic aides he has around him.

On the other hand, what does he care? He’s 79 years old and he’s living his best life redecorating the White House, pushing the world around, getting revenge on his enemies and making money hand over fist. It’s not like he cares about the country, or even his own family, beyond his primitive belief that what’s good for Donald Trump is good for the USA. He’s just a very powerful, stubborn old man building what he thinks is a legacy and will instead be a monument to failure and destruction.

But he won’t be around long enough to know it. Nixon was 61 when he resigned and he had to live through another 20 years of ignominious infamy. The way Trump’s mind’s going he’ll be in total Lalaland long before he shuffles off his mortal coil anyway.

Hegseth: "We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing… pic.twitter.com/nUWxqRXsNe

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 30, 2025

Hegseth said that he didn’t give the order to slaughter helpless victims struggling in the water but, come on. Media Matters has the receipts:

Such weak denials are not terribly credible given Hegseth’s infamous support for U.S. service members accused of war crimes in his previous job as co-host of Fox’s weekend editions of its Fox & Friends morning show.

Hegseth, in one particularly striking example, vigorously defended Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn during a February 2019 Fox & Friends appearance. 

Golsteyn, who had been charged with murdering a captured Afghan man who was allegedly a Taliban bombmaker during a 2010 deployment, had “allegedly told CIA interviewers that he and another soldier took the alleged bomb-maker off base, shot him and buried his remains,” and replied “yes” during a 2016 Fox interview when asked if he had killed the man.

Referring to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a fellow veteran who supported Golsteyn, Hegseth said: “If he committed premeditated murder, then Duncan did as well, then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?” He added: “Put us all in jail.”

He clearly doesn’t understand the laws of war and believes that the Geneva Conventions are to be thrown in the garbage. It’s just “me kill, all kill good” and that’s it. He’s a primitive man with a primitive mind and I don’t understand how in the hell he got into Yale.

Anyway, he has made this crystal clear since he became Defense Secretary and no one should be confused about what he’s doing:

“We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement,” he said in his September 30 speech to the country’s assembled military leaders. “We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

“Today is another liberation day, the liberation of America’s warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities,” he added. “You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.” 

The address came just four weeks after Hegseth reportedly committed “at best” a war crime.

We’re not at war. The whole thing is another Big Lie. He and Trump just believe they have the right to kill anyone they want anytime anywhere and are swinging their big … egos around trying to prove their manhood.

He’s a murderer, plain and simple and he’s never tried to hide his homicidal philosophy. As I wrote earlier, the U.S. Senate certainly knew this and either didn’t take it seriously or they agree with him. The blood is on their hands too.

Seriously, there is no greater evidence that we have become a rogue superpower.

Check this out. Hegseth believes it’s 1939, apparently because Americans are using cocaine?

U.S. War Minister Hegseth:

"We are not preparing for a period of peace; instead, we are shifting the Pentagon and the military-industrial base into an actual state of war.

"The moment feels like 1939—or, I hope, 1981. Enemies are gathering, and threats are mounting. You feel… pic.twitter.com/b9yK47oK0A

— Sprinter Press (@SprintMediaNews) November 8, 2025

If it’s 1939, I think we know who we are in that scenario.

Mark Fitzpatrick, the owner of the Old State Saloon, poses in front of the bar area at his establishment. He describes himself as ‘a Christian, conservative, Constitution supporter, retired police officer, and family man. 

He especially loves the parts in the Bible about the Good Samaritan,welcoming strangers and loving your neighbor:

A country-themed bar in the deep red state of Idaho delighted the Trump administration and some conservatives with its latest social media stunt on Saturday evening.

Old State Saloon, a watering hole in Eagle, pledged free beer for one month to anyone who ‘helps ICE identify and ultimately deport an illegal from Idaho,’ in an X post that went viral, garnering over 3.6 million views in under 24 hours.

The bar shared some of the messages they had received with alleged tips, encouraging law enforcement to target a hotel and an apartment complex in the vicinity of Boise, Idaho.

The post even drew the attention of President Donald Trump‘s Department of Homeland Security, which shared it with a GIF of Earl Sinclair, the main character from the family sitcom Dinosaurs that aired from 1991 to 1994, dropping his drink and jaw in a clip, seemingly approving of the offer. 

The bar replied to the DHS post: ‘Let’s go! Deport them all!’ At least one person has qualified for the offer already, according to reports.

It would be one thing if they sold themselves as the hateful, Satan acolytes they are. But the Christian stuff is galling not so much because they are hypocrites and liars but because so many of their church leaders and fellow Christians either agree or stay silent in the face of this cruel, crude behavior.

I don’t ever want to hear moralizing from these people again. Ever. Not one word.

Update — Dear leader speaking of a Democratic candidate at a “virtual rally” earlier today

"She hates Christianity" — Trump rants on Mike Johnson's phone at a Van Epps rally

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-12-01T16:54:12.468Z

Good God:

His latest plan for the new ballroom. It will dwarf the White House and be in the running with those in Las Vegas at Caesars and the Fontainebleau as the biggest on Earth.

Yes he’s got short fingers, but vulgarian is really the point of the name we assigned him 37 years ago. pic.twitter.com/G2McD3bQR9

— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) November 30, 2025

Obviously, Trump really is embarrassed about his “shortcomings.”

Seventy years ago today

Rosa Parks sparked a movement 70 years ago today by refusing to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white passenger. She was arrested. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted over a year and ended when a U.S. Supreme Court very different from ours ruled segregation on public buses unconstitutional.

Parks said of her role, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

But it took courage. The year-long boycott shows that such courage is contagious. Oppressors fear it.

Jim Crow segregation and Klan lynchings had terrorized the Black community across the South for one nearly hundred years. A decade earlier, a murderous Nazi regime ruling Germany through fear had executed millions it deemed undesirable.

German novelist Hans Fallada, the pen name of Rudolf Ditzen, wrote Every Man Dies Alone in the fall of 1946. He based his novel on a Berlin couple that resisted the Nazis with a two-year postcard-writing campaign. Hillary Kelly discusses the work, its background, and Fallada’s plot in The Atlantic. Fallada examines how ordinary Germans dealt with the Nazi culture of fear. Many submitted, but not all.

Kelly writes:

The German authorities relied on terror, even toward party members, to keep their citizenry in line. But where they erred, as Fallada writes, was in “the assumption that all Germans were cowards.” No German freedom fighters brought down the government, no anti-propaganda mission persuaded the people to rise up en masse against their tyrants; it took a world war to knock Hitler from his perch. Yet some Germans, Fallada shows, found ways to surmount their fear and assert their moral integrity in acts of dissidence, even if they could not topple the regime.

Nazis assumed all Germans were cowards. White Democrats in the Jim Crow South assumed Blacks would never tire of remaining “in their place.”

And so it begins again. New Orleans expects a visit from Greg Bovino’s immigrant-snatchers this morning. Axios reports:

Border Patrol agents are expected to start immigration enforcement efforts Monday in New Orleans, with the goal of arresting 5,000 people in south Louisiana and Mississippi, according to reports.

Why it matters: Communities are rushing to prepare amid uncertainty and mounting fear.

The big picture: Greg Bovino, the commander of Customs and Border Protection, is reportedly leading the mission after wrapping up enforcement in Charlotte and Chicago.

The DHS claim that it is targeting violent ciminals for deportation is transparent pretext:

Two months ago, DHS sent immigration officers to Chicago to detain and deport “violent offenders” that the agency said were released from state and local jails because of “sanctuary” policies. So far, the agency says it has arrested more than 4,000 people. Officials have publicly identified only about 120 of those as having a criminal arrest or conviction, some for major crimes such as murder, and others for nonviolent offenses such as illegally crossing the border.

During arrests in Gretna, Louisiana on Wednesday, customs agents tried to enforce a 25-foot buffer zone for those filming their arrests. But a federal judge in January issued a temporary injunction on that Louisiana buffer zone law ICE appears to reference. Observers resisted.

Locals are preparing as if for a hurricane:

In and around New Orleans, some immigration lawyers say they have been inundated with calls from people trying to prepare for the upcoming operation. One immigration lawyer, Miguel Elias, says his firm is conducting many consultations virtually or by telephone because people are too afraid to come in person.

He likens the steps many in the immigrant community are taking to what people do to prepare for a hurricane — hunker down or evacuate. Families are stocking up on groceries and making arrangements for friends to take their children to school to limit how frequently they leave the house, he said.

In the days leading up to Border Patrol’s planned operations, businesses have posted signs barring federal agents from entry and grassroots advocacy groups have offered rights-related trainings and workshops on documenting the planned crackdown.

The Trump administration assumes it can terrorize immigrant communities without them and their neighbors resisting. They were wrong. Not all Americans are cowards.

Six Democratic officials, five of them military veterans, did not write post cards. The made a video cautioning service members not to obey criminal orders (as some may have already).

We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.

The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.

Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r

— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025

Donald Trump called for their arrest and execution.

The President of the United States just called for my arrest and execution.

In these moments, fear is contagious, but so is courage: pic.twitter.com/QMkRRoUxEn

— Rep. Jason Crow (@RepJasonCrow) November 20, 2025

Courage is contagious. That’s why Trump 2.0 fears it.

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Hegseth “in hot water”

Has Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth started drinking again? With the pressure he’s under, it would surprise no one. The Hill reports that Hegseth faces “bipartisan scrutiny over his reported order to strike a boat in the Caribbean a second time, killing two survivors who were clinging to the ship’s wreckage on Sept. 2.”

BBC:

US lawmakers are pressing the Trump administration for answers about military strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats, after a report alleged that a follow-up strike was ordered to kill survivors of an initial attack.

Republican-led committees overseeing the Pentagon have vowed to conduct “vigorous oversight” into the US boat strikes in the Caribbean, following the report.

If reports are true, what gave him and Donald Trump the idea that blowing up small boats in international waters was a thing? Consider then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission: “No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon … into the World Trade Center, using planes as missiles.”

Um, Tom Clancey?

Stephen Miller advocated drone strikes on migrant boats filled with unarmed civilians in 2018. He argued the boats were in international waters and not protected under the US Constitution, according to Miles Taylor a former Trump administration official.

Color me unsurprised! pic.twitter.com/8q4l7Ut5l4

— Geoff (@GeoffBrown82) June 27, 2023

It turns out that someone in the Trump administration did imagine using drones to blow up boatloads of civilians in international waters. Stephen Miller did. It’s who he is.

From Rolling Stone in 2023:

Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump’s top immigration advisers, advocated using U.S. predator drones in 2018 to blow up migrant boats full of unarmed civilians, according to an upcoming book by a former administration official.

In a passage reviewed by Rolling Stone, former Trump Department of Homeland Security appointee Miles Taylor writes about an April 2018 conversation in which Miller allegedly advocated an attack on a migrant ship headed for the United States. Miller, Taylor writes, argued for the potential mass killing of civilians by suggesting they were not protected under the U.S. Constitution because they were in international waters.

Miller contested Taylor’s account at the time.

“This is a complete fiction that exists only in the mind of Miles Taylor desperate to stay relevant by fabricating material for his new book,” says a spokesman for Miller.

What about now?

According to a converstion related in Taylor’s book Miller agued with Paul Zukunft, then an commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard:

[The] United States launched airstrikes on terrorists in disputed areas all the time, Miller said, or retaliated against pirates commandeering ships off the coast of Somalia. The Coast Guard chief calmly explained the difference. America attacked enemy forces when they were armed and posed an imminent threat. Seafaring migrants were generally unarmed civilians. They quarreled for a few minutes. Stephen wasn’t interested in the moral conflict of drone-bombing migrants. He wanted to know whether anyone could stop America from doing it.

I’m thinking Hegseth did not come up with the idea of striking boats in the Caribbean (and leaving no survivors) alone.

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Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense