Diesel topped $5.90 per gallon, on average across the US, as of Monday, with regular gas above $4.15 per gallon.
Page F5From§Eachthe supper edition — 8 September 2026
Gas and diesel hit record Labor Day prices; a Senate candidate turned the receipt into a game show.
As it ran on the front
The invoice opens on September 2, before the holiday weekend even starts running its numbers. The President posts that he is weighing whether to rename the Strait of Hormuz for himself, on account of the war he started there closing it and the resulting spike being, in his word, "hotter" than ever. Two days later the strait still carries its old name and diesel carries a new price: $5.85 a gallon, an all-time high, filed Friday morning by The Hill, which named the cause as the conflict with Iran. The Washington Examiner filed the same number that Friday and named two causes — the wars in Iran and Ukraine — and noted the record it broke was itself a war record, $5.81 a gallon, set in May 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. The national average that Friday was $5.29. Economist Dean Baker had a three-word verdict on the receipt: "Trump did it."
CBS ran that same Friday's travel advisory: millions of Americans would pay more for gas and more for airfare over Labor Day, due to the Iran war and other conflicts. By Saturday the ledger had moved again — diesel to $5.88, another record — and Axios reported the incumbent party's own internal polling telling them what the pump was already telling everyone else: voters were putting the charge on the President's tab. Republicans, the outlet noted, were fretting that this was one bill you can't message away.…
…(cont) By Monday the AAA holiday tracking average — the number that made every wire that weekend — read $4.14 a gallon for regular, the highest any Labor Day has recorded. Truthout's own Monday reading ran a touch higher: diesel above $5.90, regular above $4.15. The number, in other words, kept doing what it had been doing all week. Top oil traders told the Daily Caller the shortage behind it would run through winter; they described their stockpiles, without embellishment, as pretty much at the bottom.
In Michigan, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed drew a dollar sign on a sign and asked voters to guess the price of a container of Tide pods. Twenty-two dollars a year ago. Nearly thirty dollars now. He called the game "The Price Is Wrong" and pinned the difference on Trump's tariffs and his war in Iran, a filing that lands the same week as the traders' winter warning and the President's Hormuz post — same invoice, later signature. The stockpile is at the bottom, hon, and the strait still answers to its old name.
“They keep telling you it's the market, like the market fell out of the sky — no, the President started a war on the country that ships this fuel, then got on social media to ask if the strait should carry his name. You're paying $4.14 for regular and $5.90 for diesel because a war he chose is squeezing the pipe, and a trucker's fuel bill turns into your grocery bill by Thursday. That's the con: his war, your receipt.”
“Gas prices are global, it's Iran, it's Ukraine — nobody controls world oil markets, that's just supply and demand doing its thing, has nothing to do with any one decision. And the strait renaming, that's not policy, that's just... branding, exploratory branding, forget I said that. The traders say the shortage runs through winter regardless of whose name is on it, so this was always going to happen.”
The receipts
Modeled on the familiar logo of a long-running daytime game show , US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed displayed a hand-drawn picture of a dollar sign along with the words "The Price Is Wrong" in a video posted to his official social media accounts Tuesday—and offered Michigan voters the chance to play his version of the game, inspired by…
{beacon} Energy & Environment Energy & Environment The Big Story Gasoline prices were highest ever for Labor Day The average price of gas going into this Labor Day weekend reached a record holiday high compared with past years at $4.14 a gallon, according to a national tracking average from AAA. The previous record for...
‘pretty much at the bottom of our stockpiles’
The price of diesel fuel in the US hit another record high on Saturday, as data published by the American Automobile Association showed the average cost for a gallon of diesel now stands at $5.88. According to a Saturday report from Axios, incumbent Republicans are fretting about the impact that skyrocketing gasoline and diesel prices…
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…
· Diesel prices hit record high as wars disrupt supply from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Diesel prices hit record high from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Millions of Labor Day travelers facing higher gas prices and airfare from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Trump Threatens to Rename Strait of Hormuz for Himself as War Pushes Diesel Prices Toward Record High from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.