Bar the Doors: With no agreement to pay for President Trump’s promised southern border wall, Congress and the White House are bracing for a potential government shutdown on Friday.

Any spending bill that includes significant money for the wall is unlikely to pass the Senate and might not even pass the House. Already a significant number of Republican representatives who either lost their seats or are retiring have stopped showing up.

The White House is digging in. “We’re going to do whatever is necessary to build the border wall,” White House senior adviser Stephen Miller said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” He said they are willing to push it to a shutdown. “If it comes to it, absolutely. This is a very fundamental issue.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Republicans“just have to have the guts to tell President Trump he’s off on the deep end here and all he is going to get with his temper tantrum is a shutdown. He will not get a wall.”

The Russian Front: A draft report prepared for the Senate and obtained by The Washington Post says Russian operators used everything in the social media and demographic data arsenal to support Donald Trump’s run for the President in the 2016 election.

The research was done by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm.

“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says. “Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”

2020 Vision: Displaying what might be a strategy for a presidential run in 2020, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren told a group of graduating seniors at a predominantly black college that the system is rigged against them and needs to be changed.

“The rules are rigged because the rich and powerful have bought and paid for too many politicians,” Warren said. “And if we dare to ask questions, they will try to divide us. Pit white working people against black and brown working people so they won’t band together and demand real change.”

In what might be a campaign to win black and minority voters, she told graduates at Morgan state University in Baltimore, “Two sets of rules: one for the wealthy and the well-connected. And one for everybody else,” she said. “Two sets of rules: one for white families. And one for everybody else. That’s how a rigged system works. And that’s what we need to change.”

Tomb Raiders: Egyptian authorities have revealed the finding of what they call a “one of a kind “ ancient tomb built for a high priest. The tomb in theSaqqara region south of Cairo has two levels filled with dozens of statues and colorful drawings of the priest and his family.

 The priest, Wahtye, lived during Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty under King Neferirkare. The  tomb is about 33 feet long, 10 feet wide and 10 feet high.

Christmas Comet: The bright green ball of ice 46P/Wirtanen, otherwise known as “the Christmas Comet,” is passing within easy eyesight of earth over the holiday season. It comes around every 5 ½ years. The 1.2-kilometer-wide comet will pass just 12 million kilometers from Earth, in astronomical terms nearly a traffic sideswipe.

The Obit Page: Colin Kroll, a creator of the now-defunct social-media app Vine and the trivia game HQ Trivia, was found dead in his New York apartment yesterday. He was 35.

Kroll was discovered by New York police officers conducting a wellness check. The death is being investigated as a possible drug overdose.

Since its launch just over a year ago, HQ Trivia has become enormously popular. Vine, the app for posting 6-second videos, was bought by Twitter for $30 million and shut down in 2016.

Wonderful: After “Saturday Night Live” did a “Wonderful Life” Christmas skit asking what life would be like if Donald Trump had never been born, the President complained on Twitter that unfair news coverage and SNL’s humor “should be tested in courts.”

In the skit, virtually everyone in Trump’s inner circle is better off without him, including, Kellyanne Conway, Michael Cohen, Melania Trump, and Trump’ son, Eric.

Trump wrote, “A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?”

Who needs SNL when the President makes a fool of himself?

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