Borderline Behavior: The crisis at the border of Poland and Belarus turned violent yesterday with Polish authorities using water cannon, tear gas, and rubber bullets to turn back a crush of desperate migrants. Despite that, the migrants continued overnight to crash through the border into Poland.

  In fighting off the migrants, Poland says, “we are not talking about a humanitarian crisis but a threat.”

  Today Belarus has moved to ease the situation by moving hundreds of migrants into a large warehouse.

  The migrants come mostly from underdeveloped and war torn Middle East countries. They’re trying to reach security within the European Union. The migrants, including many children, have been living in camps in freezing weather just inside Belarus. Thousands of them have converged on a crossing at Kuznica, south of Grodno in northwest Belarus.

  Belarus has been accused of feeding the crisis in an effort to destabilize the EU. The NY Times reports that, “Western officials have called the migrant crisis a ‘hybrid war’ engineered by the Belarusian leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, to punish Poland for sheltering some of his most outspoken opponents and to pressure the European Union into lifting sanctions on his country.”

Their Choice: By a roughly 2-to-1 margin Americans say that that the Supreme Court should uphold its landmark decision legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade and that the court should knock down the Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

  The poll found that 27 percent of Americans say the court should overturn Roe, and therefore abortion itself, while 60 percent say it should be upheld. Overall, three-quarters of Americans say abortion access should be left to women and their doctors, while 20 percent say it should be regulated by law.

Trial Watch: Jurors in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse have asked the judge for extra copies of their instructions, specifically pages the pages that deal with self-defense and provocation, intent to kill, and first-degree reckless homicide.

  Rittenhouse killed two unarmed men and wounded a third carrying a gun during anti-police demonstrations and rioting in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  

  The original jury of 18 that heard the case has been reduced by random lottery to seven women and five men with only one non-white member.

  Rittenhouse’s mother Wendy has been busy fundraising to pay for her son’s defense.

Art News: A self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist who died in 1954, sold at a Sotheby’s for $34.9 million last night, becoming the highest-priced work ever by a Latin American artist. It last sold for $1 million in 1990.  

  The painting titled “Diego and I” features the artist’s face with the face of  her husband, the artist Diego Rivera, on her forehead. It’s a depiction of her tortured marriage. In setting a new high for a Latin artist at auction, Kahlo surpassed a benchmark set by Rivera in 2018, when one of his paintings sold at auction for $9.76 million. It’s a shame she’ll never know.

  When you get into this realm, the money becomes more notable than the art. Also at Sotheby’s earlier this week, the divorce of billionaire real estate developer Harry Macklowe and his wife resulted in the auction of their art collection for a total of  $676.1 million. Among the paintings sold were works by Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

The Spin Rack: Oil production is beginning to catch up with demand, possibly easing prices, according to the International Energy Agency. — The prosecution has rested in the trial of three white men charged with murdering the black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in a mostly white southern Georgia neighborhood. — Retail sales jumped 1.7 percent in October, partly a sign of a returning economy, but the thumb on the scale is higher prices. — Fully vaccinated people will be allowed to gather in New York’s Times Square this New Year’s Eve. — California Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier, first elected in 2008, announced she will not seek re-election. She survived the infamous 1978 Jonestown cult massacre in Guyana with five bullet wounds.  — Nike has delayed its release of a Travis Scott shoe after the fatal concert debacle in Houston. Scott’s sneaker collections have been so popular that some shops stopped selling them to avoid crazed fans and resellers, according to GQ.

Unspoken Candidate No doubt New Jersey’s former Republican governor Chris Christie is angling himself to run for president. He won’t give straight answers about Donald Trump’s big election-theft lie or the people who keep it alive. But he made a slip in an interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.

Wallace:  Are you afraid to question the purveyors of conspiracy theories and lies?

Christie:  I don’t consider people like Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham purveyors— 

Wallace:  I didn’t say either of their names.

Naming Rights: The well-known Staples Center arena in Los Angeles is being renamed “crypto.com arena.” It just rolls off the tongue.

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