House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — who is still trying to shore up conservative backing for his speaker bid — gave his full support to the 13 House Republicans who said they’d tank any policy priorities of GOP senators who vote for the omnibus.

Said McCarthy: “Agreed. Except no need to whip — when I’m Speaker, their bills will be dead on arrival in the House if this nearly $2T monstrosity is allowed to move forward over our objections and the will of the American people.”

Of course, one of those GOP senators backing the omnibus is Mitch McConnell.

The New York City bishop who was robbed of around $1 million in jewelry during a livestreamed service in July was arrested Monday morning and is facing fraud and extortion charges, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

Lamor Whitehead, who leads Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries church in Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood, was charged with two counts of wire fraud, one count of extortion and one count of making material false statements to the FBI, court documents say.

In one instance, Whitehead, 45, is accused of convincing a parishioner to invest around $90,000 of her retirement savings with him under the pretense that he’d help her buy a home. Instead, he allegedly spent the money on “thousands of dollars of luxury goods and clothing.”

He's also accused of using threats of force to obtain $5,000 from a New York businessman, which the businessman gave to Whitehead, the court document states.

A judge declined Monday to dismiss Kari Lake's election challenge after oral arguments by attorneys, giving her a chance to try to prove her claims of misconduct by election officials.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson tossed eight of the claims in Lake's lawsuit, but allowed two to remain that alleged an intentional plot by officials to manipulate the election in favor of Lake's Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. In two separate orders, he ruled that a two-day trial will take place before Jan. 2, and that Hobbs and County Recorder Stephen Richer would be required to testify as Lake wished.

Lake has "alleged intentional misconduct sufficient to affect the outcome of the election and thus has stated an issue of fact that requires going beyond the pleadings," the ruling stated. It continued that Lake must show at trial that the county's printer malfunctions were intentionally rigged to affect the election results, and that the actions "did actually affect the outcome."

Thompson didn't immediately set the time for the trial, but ordered the attorneys for Lake and defendants including Hobbs and county officials to submit a list with the anticipated time required for the proceedings no later than 12 p.m., Dec. 20.

In a video posted to one of his YouTube channels, far-right anti-LGBTQ pastor Jonathan Shelley said he's going to have to find a new location for Stedfast Baptist Church because “nobody really wants to lease to us," adding that Stedfast Baptist Church has also been “hit with a lot of legal fees."

As Only Sky's Hemant Mehta points out, Shelley has given sermons where he's celebrated the murder of LGBTQ people and called for the deaths of abortion doctors, and has even regurgitated conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre.

Likely as a response to his sermons, the church was evicted from its location in Hurst, Texas, back in February.

"It’s not clear where Shelley would find a new home or who would be foolish enough to rent him space. No amount of rent money is worth the negative publicity that would come from allowing his church to spread hate on your property," Mehta writes. "But for Shelley and his New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (New IFB) colleagues, location doesn’t matter nearly as much as their online reach. Live-streaming sermons on YouTube matters far more than having some space inside a strip mall, and they’ve evaded YouTube’s repeated bans on their channels so far."

If you haven’t seen “Avatar: The Way of Water” yet, a social media campaign led by Native Americans hopes it’ll stay that way.

After the premiere of the long-delayed “Avatar” sequel, a renewed campaign is calling on would-be viewers to boycott the sci-fi film, which has already grossed more than $300 million internationally.

“Join Natives & other Indigenous groups around the world in boycotting this horrible & racist film,” Yuè Begay, a Navajo artist and co-chair of Indigenous Pride Los Angeles who is behind the campaign’s resurgence, wrote in a tweet that has been liked by more than 40,000 users. “Our cultures were appropriated in a harmful manner to satisfy some [white flag emoji] man’s savior complex.”

The Native American movement to boycott “Avatar” sprang up after the first film’s release in 2009. But calls to skip the franchise found new life in recent weeks with resurfaced comments made by the film’s director, James Cameron, in 2010 about the Sioux nation, including the Lakota people, which the campaign calls “anti-indigenous rhetoric.”

Vladimir Putin has discussed closer military cooperation with his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, during a rare visit to the country, as fears grow in Kyiv that Moscow is pushing its closest ally to join a new ground offensive against Ukraine.

The meeting, which was Putin’s first visit to Belarus since 2019, came hours after Moscow launched a fresh barrage of “kamikaze drones” that damaged “key infrastructure” in and around Kyiv, according to the mayor, Vitali Klitschko.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Minsk late Monday, the two leaders said that they agreed to continue a series of joint military drills that have caused alarm in Ukraine.

“We agreed to continue to take all necessary measures together to ensure the security of our two countries. To give priority to the training of troops, increase their combat readiness … and continue the practice of regular joint exercises and other operational and combat training activities,” Putin said.