Today on The BradCast: It's difficult to notice --- or trust your own eyes --- when it all happens in slow motion. At least until it happens quickly. But, yes, the wall continues to crack. Day by day. Brick by brick. [Audio to full show follows this summary.]

Among the many stories covered on today's program...

• One of the worst headwinds that House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Congressional Republicans will be facing next year, in their hopes of hanging on to their narrow majority in the lower chamber, is their cuts to Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) subsidies that are set to expire at year's end. It will skyrocket the cost of premiums for millions of Americans beginning on January 1. Today, Johnson announced his own caucus in the House could not agree on a fix, all but guaranteeing there will be no such fix until next year earliest. Congress will be recessing until 2026 at the end of this week.

• On yesterday's Rachel Maddow Show, she was somewhat misleading in her suggestion that last night at midnight, December 15th, was the last chance to sign up for a health care policy under the Affordable Care Act to ensure health care coverage next year. In fact, the Open Enrollment period for Obamacare --- for both new policies or to change a current one --- continues until January 15th next year in most states. Though, depending on which state you are in, coverage may now not begin until February under a new policy. In several states, however, which run their own exchanges (rather than forcing resident to purchase policies via the federal exchange), including California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington D.C., you can still sign up for policies (or change current ones) before the end of the year to see them take effect as of January 1. Costs are going to go up either way for millions of Americans, thanks to Republicans in Congress refusing to extend subsidies that would prevent monthly premiums for policies purchased via the Obamacare marketplaces from doubling or tripling in many cases from what they were this year.

• Donald Trump and the U.S. Military's murder spree on the high seas continued on Monday with three new attacks on three supposed drug boats near the coast of Venezuela, bringing the number of people killed by our completely unlawful attacks to at least 95. In related news on Monday, Trump signed an Executive Order "designating fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction", in hopes of adding some --- any --- legal justification to both his murder strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and a promised eventual attack on supposed "narco-terrorists" in Venezuela (even though fentanyl is not produced or trafficked from there.) Also relatedly, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said he will not release video of the unlawful second strike on an alleged drug boat from September 2nd, when the U.S. fired on two shipwrecked survivors following an attack earlier in the day, a huge violation of both U.S. and International law.

• Trump's not-insane, very powerful, and very low profile White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, had a whole bunch of pretty shocking things to say about Trump, his policies (both foreign and domestic), his top appointees (from Vance to Bondi to Vought), his retribution campaign against political foes, and much more in some ten interviews reportedly given over the past year to an author who has written a book about WH Chiefs of Staff over the years. A number of Wiles' eyebrow raising remarks from those interviews were published by Vanity Fair today and D.C. is abuzz trying to figure out what it all means.

• As still more bricks in the wall appear to be falling out, a number of Republicans, including MAGA loyalists past and present, have seemingly turned --- gently or otherwise --- against Donald Trump's deranged, repulsive remarks on Monday about the murder of Hollywood legend Rob Reiner, who was killed just hours earlier on Sunday along with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in their Los Angeles home.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report as climate change-fueled torrential rain, flooding and levee failure plague the Pacific Northwest; Trump continues his very selective and political approval for federal disaster aid; and as New York City's congestion pricing program (which Trump opposes, natch) continues to clear the air in Midtown...

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Today's BradCast was not the show I had hoped to do today. But, after a weekend of gut-wrenching violence around the globe and back here at home, including here in Los Angeles, I'm not sure what other show we could have done. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Please forgive the technical snafus at our flagship station, Pacifica Radio's KPFK here in L.A. at the top of the show. (Even if they may provide the most "comedy" were were able to muster for today's program!)

Among the tragic incidents covered today, with callers ringing in at the end...

• Two U.S. service members and an American civilian translator were killed in Syria, supposedly by a member of ISIS, though that remains unclear.

• At least two were killed and nine wounded during a gun massacre at Brown University in Rhode Island. The shooter, despite being falsely identified by the FBI on Sunday (that man was later released) remains at large at this hour, three days later. For several of the students at Brown, shamefully, it was not the first school shooting they survived.

• At least 15 were killed and more than 40 wounded in an antisemitic gun massacre by two men, a father and son, during a celebration of the first night of Hanukah at Sydney, Australia's Bondi Beach on Sunday. The identities of the two shooters (one of whom was killed, the other is in the hospital) remain unknown. But a heroic fruit-vendor named Ahmed el Ahmed, managed to tackle and disarm one of the shooters. Following a very rare mass shooting in Australia, political leaders there vowed to enact still tougher gun laws in a nation that already has many strict ones in place.

• And on Sunday night, in heartbreaking news that has rocked Hollywood, the state of California, the nation and likely the world, we learned that iconic actor, director, writer, producer and political activist Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were murdered at their Brentwood home yesterday afternoon. The couple's youngest son, who had a history of substance abuse, has been taken into custody by law enforcement following what is being described as a gruesome knife attack.

As you may guess, we've got a lot to say about all of the above. Particularly about the horrific death of the legendary Reiner; the horrific comments made about his murder by our psychologically twisted President of the United States; and the important role Reiner, a devoted liberal Democrat, has played over decades in both American and California politics.

Callers ring in...

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