An interagency agreement would give the Pentagon access to the health agency’s coffers on top of its own massive budget.
Page F2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 4 September 2026
Trump diverts NIH billions to Iran war, diesel price hits record $5.85 for the cause
As it ran on the front
There are two columns in the ledger, and they’re not the ones you’d expect. On one, the public NIH budget, billions allocated for medical research—cancer, rare diseases, the sort of thing that shows up on a telethon. On the other, a line-item nobody hears about: backdoor transfers, quietly funneled to fund the latest foreign adventure, this time in Iran. The receipts are in the record: the Trump administration, behind closed doors, moves billions from NIH to feed the Pentagon’s appetite for conflict.
The war's tab doesn’t stop at appropriations. The headline lands at the pump: $5.85 for a gallon of diesel, the highest price on record, and the cause pinned cleanly to the war on Iran. The cost isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet—it’s the supply chain, the farmer’s field, the school bus. It’s the grocery bill, the delivery fee, the hospital generator.…
…(cont) The shift is surgical. The budget for cures slips away, and the invoice lands in the tank. No press release, no ribbon-cutting. The only announcement is a sign at the gas station, and the only applause is the sound of the meter ticking past five dollars.
The numbers reconcile neatly. The billions don’t vanish; they just change columns. The fuel gauge reads empty, the research wing gets mothballed, and the only thing that goes up is the cost of war—paid by everyone who can’t expense it.
Hon, you can reconcile every federal dollar, but you can’t fill a prescription with a missile, and you can’t treat a tumor with a barrel of crude.
“They say there's no money for cancer research, but the cash finds its way to missiles and oil shocks just fine. Every time the price at the pump jumps, it's not magic—it's a receipt for a war no one voted for, paid at the register. The war machine's got a loyalty card, and your kid's hospital wing doesn't.”
“Look, strategic priorities sometimes require reallocating funds—national security comes first, and energy prices are complex, really. The market always corrects itself anyway, and besides, if the price goes up a bit, that's just how global leadership works. Did I say billions? That can't be right, but even if it is, nobody can prove that's what made the price spike.”
The receipts
The average price for a gallon of diesel fuel in the United States hit an all-time high average price of $5.85 on Friday as the Trump administration's war on Iran and its resulting disruptions to the global energy market showed no signs of ending. "Trump did it! Diesel hits a new record high!" economist Dean Baker wrote sardonically on…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.