A recently published economic analysis estimates that President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran has cost US consumers an average of $1,760 per household—including a total of $121 billion in extra spending on energy alone—since the conflict began less than 8 months ago. The war, which Trump launched without congressional…
Page F3From§Eachthe late evening edition — 25 September 2026
Trump repeats the pocket rescission both parties already call illegal.
As it ran on the front
The ledger this month reads like a family that says it's broke while somehow still paying the country club. On September 16th a watchdog found the government's "Fork in the Road" buyout push, the one sold as trimming the federal payroll, had itself run up nearly $7 billion in costs. The next day, Moody's put a number on what the Iran war has done to home energy bills: $121 billion extra nationwide since February, $1,760 a household, nobody's line item, everybody's invoice. On the 18th a federal judge — a Trump appointee, for the record — ordered the administration to put back the $7 billion Solar for All program it had tried to zero out.
That's the frame this week's beat sits inside. The Government Accountability Office counted six separate detention-expansion projects ICE has run since January 2025 and found, by its own count, no planning process behind them establishing the capacity was needed before it was built.…
…(cont) Friday night, with that finding eleven days old, the White House filed the paperwork to cancel it. The signed rescission itemizes $810 million by category — immigration and refugee programs, foreign debt relief, business grants tied to diversity initiatives — inside a package wire services total at nearly $1 billion the same night. It is the second pocket rescission in fifty years. Both were signed by this president. Lawmakers in both parties are calling the maneuver itself illegal, which means the same government now paying $7 billion to buy out its own workforce, financing detention capacity nobody planned for, and passing $121 billion in war costs to households in their utility bills is simultaneously canceling $1 billion on the books as spending discipline.
The gap between what's itemized and what's tallied is small change against the buyout bill and the energy math. It's not small against the categories it landed on. Immigrant and refugee programs, race-conscious grants — those get named, dollar for dollar. The unused detention capacity, the buyout overrun, the war surcharge on your thermostat — those stay in the aggregate, uncounted by category, which is a filing choice, not an accident.
“They keep telling you there's no money — then a judge has to physically order them to put back seven billion for solar, and your gas bill's carrying a war nobody voted on. Notice which cuts get an itemized list with names on it and which ones just get folded into a number nobody has to explain. That's not an accounting error, that's a choice about whose column gets a receipt and whose gets a rounding error.”
“Look, the President is cutting waste, that's just — that's a fact, $810 million, itemized, in writing. Is it the second time he's done something bipartisan lawmakers call illegal? I mean, technically, but "illegal" is really more of a — did I say illegal? I meant robust. The buyouts, the detention thing, that's a separate department, separate story, not on me.”
Earlier in this story
- Government wastes millions building ICE jails it didn't check it needed, then cuts $810 million elsewhere for waste. By Ruth · the early evening edition, 25 September 2026
The receipts
President Donald Trump canceled nearly $1 billion in unspent federal funding on Friday night, marking the second “pocket” rescission overall in 50 years, each issued by Trump during his second term. Trump’s Friday evening rescission strips back $810 million in funding for several immigration and refugee programs, foreign debt-relief…
A federal court has rebuffed the Trump administration’s effort to slash a $7 billion program that seeks to provide rooftop solar power in disadvantaged communities. Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee in Rhode Island, vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) move to terminate the Solar For All (SFA) program and claw back the…
President Trump moved to cancel almost $1 billion in spending that was approved by Congress, marking the second time his administration has employed a rarely used tactic that some lawmakers in both parties have called illegal.
· DOGE’s ‘Fork in the road’ buyouts cost government nearly $7 billion: Watchdog from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.