Federal IRS workers at the Chamblee Building are often greeted by rats struggling to free themselves from glue traps set about the workplace. Workers at the Veterans Affairs building in Hilo, Hawaii, are having to deal with dangerous infestations of mold. Federal employees in several places, including the Food and Drug Administration building in Washington, DC, are being exposed to Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease.

The US Supreme Court ruled this week that the twentieth-century interpretation of so-called “birthright citizenship”—i.e., the idea that virtually anyone born inside the territory of the United States is an automatic citizen—is to be upheld. This further solidifies into US law the idea that children born on US soil to visiting foreign nationals—among many other non-citizens—are granted citizenship automatically. 

Modern theories of money often begin with the state. According to chartalists—from Georg Friedrich Knapp’s The State Theory of Money through modern proponents such as L. Randall Wray, with David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years as a popular fellow traveller—money originates in taxation, legal decree, and state accounting systems.

Modern societies increasingly seek certainty. Governments, corporations, and experts increasingly rely on ever more sophisticated technologies to predict behavior, manage risk, coordinate complex systems, and reduce uncertainty. Artificial intelligence promises unprecedented efficiency. Algorithms detect patterns invisible to the human eye. Vast administrative networks collect and process information on a scale that previous generations could scarcely have imagined.

To further celebrate the Year of Rothbard, the Mises Institute will give away a different Rothbard book each month through December 31. This month’s book is Rothbard’s The Origins of the Federal Reserve.

In his 6/23 Truth Social post (figure 1), President Trump noted that the prices paid by major American oil companies for foreign crude are falling much faster than the prices of their retail products, and suggested that there is something criminal about this that the Department of Justice (DOJ) needs to look into:

Figure 1: Trump Denounces Oil Price “Gouging”