Dear Running on Empty,

I went looking for the tape of "fake news" at the gas question and could not find one I could file, so that line isn't in my book. What is in my book is what they said instead, with the price that day beside it. I would rather show you a man's receipts than his excuses. The receipts stay put.

Start where they started. He took office with regular at $3.11 and a promise to cut energy costs in half within twelve months. At the twelve-month mark gas was $2.78, an eleven percent decline, with electricity up seven percent and natural gas up nine. PolitiFact filed the promise under "stalled." Eleven percent in a year is not half, sugar, but I have been married to less.

Then, on February 24, the State of the Union: gas is "now below $2.30 a gallon in most states and in some places $1.99." The national average that month was $2.94. Four days later the strikes on Iran began, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude rose 65 percent in March, the largest monthly rise on record. Gas went from $2.98 on the day the war started to $4.11 by April 15, which is the day the press secretary told reporters to "look at how gas prices decreased over the past year since this president was in office." On May 7 he said prices had "come down very substantially today." They had risen every day that week and stood at $4.56, the ninth-highest weekly average since 1990. On July 2 he posted a picture of a gas station where the price had come down. It had seven columns holding up a roof over five pumps, numbered 2, 2, 4, 5 and 8. I have been in a place like that. It was not real either.

So here is the reconciliation. Nobody at the pump is reading the news; the pump is reading the Strait. The price fell eleven cents on the dollar in the year before the war and rose a dollar and a half in the ten weeks after it, and the one gas station in America where his team has made the price go down was not a photograph. Today's AAA average is $4.22, a dollar and three cents above a year ago. His latest word, Labor Day, on Truth Social: "three dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below two dollars ... it will all happen quickly." I have been told it will all happen quickly. Every gallon of it is still on the meter.

— Vivian

The working papers

• AAA national average, September 9, 2026: $4.22; a year ago $3.19
• The promise, "cut energy costs in half within 12 months": $3.11 at the inauguration, $2.78 a year on, rated Stalled
• The State of the Union, February 24, 2026: "below $2.30 ... in some places $1.99"; GasBuddy's February average $2.94; the Labor Day post
• The strikes on Iran began February 28, 2026; Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz
• Brent rose about 65 percent in March, its largest monthly rise on record
• The press secretary, April 15, 2026, against AAA's $2.98 on February 27 and $4.11 that day
• "Come down very substantially today," May 7, 2026: AAA $4.457 to $4.558 that week, ninth-highest since 1990
• The gas station post, July 2, 2026: seven columns, five pumps, numbered 2, 2, 4, 5, 8

Dear Wide Awake,

Your sister has the tape. On August 11 a host on Real America's Voice told him that if the Senate never passes his elections bill he has "the right to declare a national security emergency for elections," and he answered, "Stranger things have happened. I'll leave it at that." Sugar, I have been left at that before. It is not a plan. It is a man keeping his options open in front of a microphone.

So let's look at what an emergency actually opens. The Brennan Center keeps the list: 137 statutory powers unlock when a president declares one, and 13 more when Congress does. A hundred and fifty doors, and not one of them opens onto a polling place. The powers are about land, troops, public health, and the federal payroll. Elections are not on the list. I have read the list, in bed, twice.

Now the date. Congress fixed it in 1872: the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, every even year, for a Congress "commencing on the 3d day of January next thereafter." Only Congress can move it. The last time he asked, in July 2020, tweeting "Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???", the Senate majority leader of his own party said the country had held its elections on time "through wars, depressions, and the Civil War," and it did, ninety-six days later, on schedule.

The voting places are your county's, not his. The Constitution gives the "Times, Places and Manner" of congressional elections to the state legislatures, with Congress above them and nobody else in the room. And the one federal statute about who may show up at the polls with a gun is a prohibition: a federal officer who keeps "troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held" gets up to five years and is barred from federal office, unless the force is needed "to repel armed enemies of the United States." That is the only exception, and it is not a large one. I have known men who thought they qualified.

What he can do is what he has done: sign an order telling the Postal Service to stop delivering mail ballots in states that won't hand over their voter lists. On August 24 the Supreme Court let part of it go forward, unsigned, three justices dissenting, while adding that this "does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful," and a second injunction still holds nationwide. That is the actual fight, and it is about the mail, not the door.

Here is what locking the doors would get him. Every House term ends at noon on January 3, 2027, election or no election; the Twentieth Amendment does not ask whether anyone voted. A president who cancels the midterms has no House, the Senate seats up this year empty beside it, and a term of his own that ends at noon on January 20, 2029, by the same amendment. Until then he has the emergency powers, all 137 of them, and not one is the one your sister heard.

— Vivian

The working papers

• "Stranger things have happened. I'll leave it at that." August 11, 2026
• The Brennan Center's catalog: 137 statutory emergency powers, 13 more for Congress, none about elections
• 2 U.S.C. § 7, the date of congressional elections, enacted 1872
• "It would take an act of Congress to change the date; the President has no authority to order that an election be canceled or postponed."
• The July 30, 2020 post, "Delay the Election"
• McConnell, 2020: on time "through wars, depressions, and the Civil War"
• The Elections Clause, Article I, Section 4: "Times, Places and Manner"
• 18 U.S.C. § 592, troops at the polls: five years, disqualified from office
• The Supreme Court's August 24, 2026 order on the mail-ballot executive order
• The Twentieth Amendment: House and Senate terms end at noon January 3; the president's at noon January 20
• Bannon's ask: an "up-armored ICE presence at these polling booths"

Dear Priced Out,

Sugar, I have been promised quarterly before, and I have learned to count the tranches. Let's look at yours. Eighty thousand metric tons of Argentine lean beef, authorized in February, in four quarterly deliveries. Twenty thousand tons a quarter. Then on August 21 the tariff came off up to 300,000 tons of imported trimmings, announced by social-media post, which is how a lot of things get announced now that used to take dinner first.

Your brother-in-law wants to know who is doing what to whom. I keep a simpler book. Ground beef is $6.89 a pound this year, the record, up 72 percent since January 2020. The herd is 86.2 million head, the smallest since 1951. Those two numbers did not need anybody's help getting together. That is what happens when the supply gets small and the appetite doesn't.

Now, the bailout. The Treasury did announce a $20 billion currency swap with Argentina's central bank on October 9, and the president said that same month that "Argentina is fighting for its life." So there are two stated reasons on the one invoice, and only one of them came with a number. I don't write down motive; I have been wrong about motive since 1971. I write down what was on the table and what came off it.

And what came off it is not your grocery bill. The trade's own forecast says normal prices no sooner than 2028. The cattlemen's association went on the record that it "cannot stand behind the President" on the imports, which in my experience is a position, not a posture. So you have a president with a supplier in need, a rancher lobby with its arms folded, and a forecast that goes to bed early. None of the three has your seven dollars getting smaller. It isn't a foreign affair. It's a domestic one: there are fewer cows in this country than the year your grandmother got married, and the Argentine beef is arriving the way it always has, slowly, in installments, and later than promised.

— Vivian

The working papers

• Ground beef, $6.89 a pound, up 72 percent since January 2020
• The herd, 86.2 million head, smallest since 1951
• 80,000 metric tons in four quarterly tranches, February 2026
• Tariffs lifted on up to 300,000 metric tons of trimmings, August 21, 2026
• The $20 billion swap line, announced October 9, 2025
• "Argentina is fighting for its life," October 2025
• Normal prices no sooner than 2028, the trade's forecast
• The cattlemen's association, on the record