[Published in the Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2026 - ed.]

Thanks in large part to the erratic and often-destructive policies coming from Donald Trump’s White House, the Democrats are favored to win both houses of Congress, as they hope to flip several Republican-held seats in the House and the Senate. One of the most closely-watched races is the Senate campaign in Maine, where upstart Democrat Graham Platner is favored to end Sen. Susan Collins’s long political career.

The Mises Institute announces 11 new Associated Scholars rooted in the Misesian tradition. Associated Scholars are a vital part of our network, growing the Austrian intellectual tradition through independent writing, teaching, and speaking in their professional careers and at their academic institutions. Many have come through our programs, others are self-taught, but all are making an impact through their own successes. Hilary Clinton was right about one thing: it does take a village. We are proud to be associated with them.

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee Today announced that it will keep its target policy interest rate at 3.75 percent. The FOMC has held to this target now for seven months, but has reduced the target rate by 175 basis points since August 2024. The committee’s statement, released this afternoon, is considerably shorter than those released by former chairman Jerome Powell, coming in at only 125 words. The statement reads: 

The Old Breed . . . The Complete Story Revealed:
A Father, A Son, and How WWII in the Pacific Shaped Their Lives
W. Henry Sledge
Knox Press, 2025; 352 pp.

As Murray Rothbard has taught us, few wars are just, and in modern times the conditions for a just war are virtually impossible to fulfill. One of the main reasons for this is that a modern war is bound to injure innocent civilians. As he puts it:

This article is adapted from a talk given at California’s Decline: A Warning to America in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026.

In 2017, Scout Sheys, a resident of Berkeley, California, attended a town council meeting regarding a proposed housing development for a two-story building next to her house. As she spoke, she hoisted a zucchini above her head and waved it for the council to see.

According to the Washington Times from June 10, 2026, the US President Donald Trump brushed off the rising inflation number—i.e., the yearly growth rate of the consumer price index (CPI)—which jumped to 4.2 percent in May from 3.8 percent in April.

This article is adapted from a talk given at California’s Decline: A Warning to America in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026.

I’ll continue with the theme of establishing our connections to California. I was born here and spent a good deal of my childhood here. My mother’s family moved to Southern California when she entered high school, and my father’s side of the family settled in Northern California in the 1840s. They actually took a covered wagon across the country.

Still no sign of market freedom at the Fed. The Fed will use its powers to buy and sell assets to manipulate interest rates.