THE MIDDLE OF SHITSHOW WEEK

This is the middle of Week Two of the Krayzee Shitshow. With the swearing-in of Representative Adelita Grijalva today, and her becoming the 218th representative to sign the Epstein Files discharge petition, we’re soon going to be finding out more about this little gem: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”– Jeffrey Epstein, referring to Donald Trump in a January 2019 email - one of three emails sent by Epstein to Michael Wolff between 2011-2019 released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committeethat raise fresh questions over what Trump knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual misconduct.

Trump has threatened to deploy troops to Chicago over a distressed shopping center that does not exist. “The Miracle Mile Shopping Center in Chicago, once considered our Nation’s BEST, now has a more than 28% vacancy factor, and is ready to call it quits unless something is done about the murder and crime, which is prevalent throughout the City,” he raged in a Lies Anti-Social post just past midnight on Tuesday. “CALL IN THE TROOPS, FAST, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!” he added. There is no “Miracle Mile Shopping Center” in Illinois’ largest city. While there are shopping districts with that name in California, Florida, New York, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, it would not appear the president plans to stage a military intervention in Chicago by dispatching personnel to other cities between 800 and 2,000 miles away. Trump seems to have drawn on a Nov. 8 article by the conservative site Just the News headlined “Chicago Blues: Downtown office space vacancy rate jumps to record high levels,” which outlines how over the past two years, businesses cutting their office space in Chicago’s Loop district have resulted in about 2.3 million square feet being vacated. That story makes no mention of crime rates as a driving factor behind the trend of increasing vacancies, instead attributing the changes to structural shifts in work culture following the COVID-19 pandemic, with more employers offering remote or hybrid roles.

The face of Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown had one of the worst records of using “disproportionate” violence even before he got the job, a watchdog report has found. Greg Bovino has thrust himself into the center of military-style round-ups in Los Angeles and Chicago and been ruled by a judge to be a liar. Bovino, whom DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has been calling Border Patrol’s “commander-at-large” since October, has been wearing military-style uniform and surrounding himself with masked goons as he brawls with protesters and takes part in made-for-social media stunts. Now a report from Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop (IRW) has shed light on his earlier role, commanding Border Patrol in the El Centro zone of the Californian border with Mexico. Bovino has remained the chief of BP’s El Centro Sector while also leading the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Los Angeles and Chicago. The report, which analyzed publicly available federal data, found that in the past three years, Bovino’s agents in El Centro recorded more instances of force per apprehension than any other in Border Patrol, and they use force far more often than agents report being assaulted. The report’s authors say that from 2022 through 2025, El Centro logged 300 use-of-force incidents against 83 reported assaults on agents—a ratio of more than 3.6 to 1,while Border Patrol overall ran just above 2 to 1. El Centro’s ratio was the highest of any sector nationwide, per POGO/IRW. The pattern is even starker when counted by the number of agents involved, POGO/IRW reports. El Centro’s agent-level ratio of force to assaults hit 4.16 to 1, more than double the Border Patrol-wide average which was less than 2-1. Experts say El Centro’s force stands out even after adjusting for how “busy” a sector is. “The number of reported use-of-force incidents per 100,000 apprehensions—shows that ‘El Centro is an outlier,” said Isacson. Isacson noted that El Centro’s reported assaults per apprehension had been in line with peers until 2025, which he said “raised eyebrows.” “Measured as a proportion of migrant apprehensions, reported assaults in El Centro are not unusual until 2025, when the El Centro Sector rises to double the rate of the second-place sector,” he said. “This does raise eyebrows since Bovino has been so quick to allege ‘assault’ in Los Angeles and Chicago, even in dubious cases where the supposed assailants are released without charges.”

This is pretty much what we deserve: Great Britain - America’s closest military ally - has stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean because it believes Trump’s lethal strikes are illegal. Amid growing international skepticism about the campaign against so-called “narco terrorists,” the UK is reportedly no longer sharing information with the U.S. because it does not want to be complicit in the attacks.

The move, first reported by CNN, marks a significant shift for the UK, which controls a number of territories in the Caribbean and has traditionally helped the U.S. Coast Guard locate and intercept vessels suspected of carrying drugs. Britain paused intelligence about a month ago because officials believe the lethal strikes, which have so far killed 76 people, violate international law. Legal experts, global leaders and even some Republicans have questioned the legality of bombing suspected civilian cartel members without any attempt to intercept or capture them first. The intelligence shared by the UK was typically sent to Joint Interagency Task Force South, which is stationed in Florida to counter transnational criminal organizations. The task force works in partnership with military and law enforcement units from various Central and South American nations, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Following the British lead, France has also stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S.

The USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group entered Latin American waters Tuesday, joining eight warships, a nuclear submarine, and F-35 aircraft already deployed in the Caribbean. The Ford carries dozens of tactical aircraft. U.S. officials say the deployment targets drug-trafficking operations, but Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro calls it preparation for intervention. In response, Venezuela has ordered a full-scale military mobilization in the expectation of a U.S. attack. Reuters reports the country plans to mount a guerilla resistance to a U.S. invasion. As we have seen over the past 60 years, the U.S. military doesn’t do well against guerillas.

Our Historical Illiterate who resides in the Gold House declared Tuesday that he was giving Veterans Day a new name while speaking at a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. “As you know today is not only Veterans Day, but it’s my proclamation that we are now going to be saying and calling Victory Day for World War I,” Trump said. He said he was recently at an event and saw that European countries were celebrating Victory Day, but the U.S. was not. “I saw France was celebrating another Victory Day for World War II, and other countries were celebrating,” he rambled. “They were all celebrating. We’re the one that won the wars.” He declared, “From now on we’re going to be celebrating Victory Day for World War I, for World War II and frankly for everything else.” There won’t be any victories to be declared and remembered from Maladministration II. Watching this worthless draft-dodging service-avoiding lying coward lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns was disgusting. The Atlantic released a bombshell report in September 2020 that said that Trump canceled his visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 in part because he did not believe it was important to honor Americans killed and reportedly called those buried there as “losers” and “suckers” for getting killed. Trump’s chief of staff from his first term, former Marine General John Kelly, confirmed the reports last year.

Felon 34 has asked the Supreme Court to review the $5 million civil verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. His shysters urged the justices to overturn the ruling, arguing that Carroll’s decades-old allegation was politically motivated and unsupported by direct evidence. Caroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the mid-1990s in a New York department store. “There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation. Instead, Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th president, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself.” A federal appeals court last year upheld the jury’s verdict, confirming that Trump must pay Carroll in compensatory and punitive damages for defaming her in his public statements. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, told Axios in September that the decision reaffirmed that “E. Jean Carroll was telling the truth, and that President Donald Trump was not.” She said last month, “There’s nothing in that case that’s SCOTUS worthy.” One of Trump’s toadies said, “The American people stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the witch hunts. President Trump will keep winning against liberal lawfare as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again.”

The Trump DOJ’s bogus prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James just got a lot more difficult to pull off, with what appears to be a major administration coverup of the origins of the case against her. In a new report, the WSJ fleshed out a Reuters account from last week about the ousting of the acting inspector general at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Watchdogs at Fannie Mae had been looking into whether Pulte had “improperly obtained mortgage records of key Democratic officials,” including James. Per WSJ: “Fannie’s ethics and investigations group had received internal complaints alleging senior officials had improperly directed staff to access the mortgage documents of James and others, according to the people. The Fannie investigators were probing to find out who had made the orders, whether Pulte had the authority to seek the documents and whether or not they had followed proper procedure, the people said.” The investigation into who was rifling around in the personal mortgage records of prominent Democrats was serious enough to bring it to Joe Allen, the acting inspector general for FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to the WSJ: “The acting inspector general then passed the report to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia, some of the people said.” The Eastern District of Virginia is where recently-installed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan is prosecuting James. Reuter’s reported: “Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in that office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said, while a third described it as being potentially relevant in discovery.” In her motion last Friday to dismiss the case for vindictive prosecution, James referenced the Reuters’ report and indicated that she had not received from prosecutors whatever it was that Allen had turned over.In addition to Allen, a dozen officials within Fannie Mae’s ethics and internal investigations unit were fired on Oct. 29 in the wake of the probe into origins of the bogus mortgage fraud claims and who had access to the personal mortgage records of James and others. So, government watchdogs who were looking into the origins of the bogus mortgage fraud claims were fired en masse, but not before the acting inspector general for the FHFA managed to turn over what appears to be exculpatory evidence to federal prosecutors in the James case.

Maladministration II has formally determined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s current funding mechanism is unlawful, a move that puts the agency on track to close in the coming months when its existing cash runs out. The decision, disclosed in a court filing late Monday, marks the administration’s most direct effort yet to dismantle the consumer watchdog and sets up a new front in the ongoing legal battle over its future. The administration said it now considers the CFPB legally barred from seeking additional money from the Federal Reserve, which is the agency’s typical source of funding. In the filing, the CFPB said it has enough money to last “at least” through the end of the year but “anticipates exhausting its currently available funds in early 2026.” The move would leave the CFPB without money to operate starting next year, even to carry out its required activities, unless Congress passes fresh funding for the agency. That is unlikely, given widespread Republican opposition to the CFPB. A new opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, submitted in court, contends that the CFPB cannot draw money from the Federal Reserve currently because the agency is only entitled to the central bank’s surpluses and the Fed has operated at a loss since 2022. The Dodd-Frank Act, which created the CFPB, requires the Fed to transfer from the “combined earnings of the Federal Reserve System” the amount that the CFPB director determines is necessary to operate the agency, with certain limits. The Justice Department said that it now believes that “combined earnings” refers to profits. “If the Federal Reserve has no profits, it cannot transfer money to the CFPB,” the DOJ wrote. That argument gained traction in conservative circles as a new way to attack the CFPB after the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality in 2024. But several federal judges have rejected that theory when companies raised it to dismiss CFPB lawsuits. Even Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, similarly rejected the premise that the CFPB can only be funded through Fed profits.

Trump has officially urged Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon his longtime ally Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for corruption. In a signed letter to Herzog, Trump asked him to pardon Netanyahu to help the country “move past the terribly difficult times” of the past three years regarding the war in Gaza. “While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli justice system and its requirements, I believe that this ‘case’ against Bibi, who has fought alongside me for a long time, including against the very tough adversary of Israel, Iran, is a political, unjustified prosecution.” Trump’s letter to Herzog marks the first time he has formally asked the Israeli president to pardon Netanyahu over the corruption allegations. The move has been criticized as a U.S. president intervening in a foreign country’s political and legal affairs to benefit one of his allies. Pardons can only be granted in Israel once someone has been convicted, with only one known instance of a preemptive pardon in the country’s history.

Dr. Paul Krugman gets today’s last word: “The political moral is that the humiliating cave over the shutdown isn’t the end of the story. Democrats can and should keep hammering Trump and his party over their indifference to the suffering of ordinary Americans. They need to make sure both that Americans know who’s responsible for surging premiums now and that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will lead to savage cuts in both Medicaid and food stamps after the midterms. MAGA can’t help being cruel. It can’t even pretend to care about other people’s suffering. And Democrats should take full advantage of this pathology.”

You are not the crazy ones. This is the fight of our lifetimes, and the challenge of our generation. Please consider joining the other paid subscribers here at That’s Another Fine Mess to keep things going. It’s only 21 cents a day.

Comments are for paid subscribers.