With the federal government’s partial shutdown over, the Treasury Department has issued its October report on tax receipts and outlays. Unfortunately, in spite of countless claims from MAGA boosters claiming federal spending will be slashed by Trump, there is still no sign of anything resembling a significant cutback in federal spending.
The White House and Pentagon can’t seem to get the story straight on the “double-tap” murder of survivors of a US extrajudicial killing off the coast of Venezuela.
On October 23, the Trump administration announced to Congress that it is planning “land attacks” within Venezuelan territory. Such attacks, of course, would be acts of war, and there are no plans for Congress to declare war on any foreign state.
“We are all fallible; progress consists in discovering our errors and correcting them.”—Karl Popper
“Human action is always rational: not because it is perfect, but because it seeks improvement.”—Ludwig von Mises
“The curious task of economics is to show men how little they know about what they imagine they can design.”—Friedrich Hayek
December 31, 2025, concludes the first twenty-five years of the 21st century. The US government’s future bankruptcy results from poor personnel, policy, and money decisions that have impacted everyday people. Looking back from 2000 to 2025 showed a numbing expansion of federal government and Federal Reserve Bank power, economic intervention, regulation, and waste. Personal and economic freedoms have declined.
Trump’s political opponents in the Democratic Party and establishment media trotted out a new line of attack on his administration over the weekend. It began after the Washington Post ran a story on Friday about the first strike against what the Pentagon claims were drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean back on September 2.
Introduction and scope of the debate
Each day we are reminded of this legal imposition by the familiar phrase stamped on every US dollar bill: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” Innocuous on the surface, but these words conceal a profound immorality that strikes at the heart of voluntary exchange. If a man of sound mind agrees to settle a contract in X, then he should be obligated to pay X. Forcing him to accept anything other than X as payment is an egregious violation of contractual and property rights.
The city’s capture would represent Kiev’s greatest setback on the front line since the fall of Avdiivka in February 2024.
