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During his first presidential campaign in 2016, amid a strong economy President Barack Obama revived after the 2008 financial crisis, Donald Trump lied repeatedly about the national unemployment rate. Although it was roughly 4 percent, Trump repeatedly claimed that it was 30 percent and even 40 percent.
Now Trump faces a paralyzing predicament. There are no public billboards displaying the latest monthly unemployment figures. But Americans can see the real retail price of gas in bright lights displayed at every filling station, truck stop, and highway rest stop they pass.
Petrol politics in the 2026 election cycle are doubly damning for Donald because Americans are suddenly focused on the price of diesel almost as much as regular gas. The price of the latter has risen about a dollar since the start of Trump’s war of choice against Iran, but diesel prices have nearly doubled in the 20 months since Trump took office.
This unprecedented, budget-crippling surge in diesel is tanking — so to speak — not only Trump’s approval ratings but the chances that many petrified Republicans will survive an already bad midterm cycle.
Diesel damage
Because their cars run on electric or regular gas, most American drivers have long ignored the diesel prices listed above those separate, differently-colored hoses on the left side of gas pumps. Diesel prices only affect farmers and truckers, right?
Not quite. The price of food grown on farms and delivered by diesel-fueled trucks, not to mention every other commodity thusly delivered, includes diesel costs. When diesel prices rise dramatically, so do prices for most consumer goods.
In fact, in August when diesel cost at least a dollar less than currently, the US Labor Department reported that consumer prices were already 3.4 percent higher than August 2025; the surge in diesel’s price in September should further widen year-against inflation comparisons in the coming months.
Rising diesel prices also affect what Americans pay for a new car or home. The Federal Reserve excludes the prices for regular gas and groceries when it calculates the “core” inflation rate. But as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explains, higher diesel costs translate indirectly via higher prices for the commodities the government does use to calculate core inflation, a key benchmark the Fed consults when setting interest rates. Higher diesel prices will force Americans to pay more for car liens and home mortgages.
American consumers are also suffering a variety of related impacts of Trump’s record-breaking diesel prices. Examples include:
More than half of school districts are already running over their diesel budgets, and many are cutting or consolidating bus routes to save money. Travelers should also expect ticket fare increases because so many private bus lines, trains, and airplanes depend upon diesel.
In Maine, which ranks first with roughly half its citizens relying on home heating oil, a “concerned” Susan Collins is begging the feds to double her state’s heating oil subsidy so Mainers don’t freeze this winter now that diesel-based heating oil prices have risen about $700 per 250-gallon home tank.
To reduce the pain felt by his state’s sugar farmers, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry issued an executive order to temporarily allow them to use a so-called “dyed diesel” alternative normally banned from highway use to deliver raw sugar cane to refineries. Fellow Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a similar dyed diesel emergency order for Texas farmers.
To save an estimated $250,000 in diesel costs, starting in November the San Francisco ferry administration will eliminate one daily service between downtown and Vallejo.
This list is growing and hardly exhaustive.
Red-faced Republicans run scared
Diesel gas problems would be bad enough for Republicans this November were the economic pain of higher prices felt equally in every region and across all demographic groups. But the bitter yet deserved irony is that key constituencies across Red America that elected Trump are particularly hard-hit: men, whites, farmers, rural citizens, and those from the South and West.
The New Republic’s Virginia Heffernan nicely summarized diesel’s disproportionate impacts on Trump’s coalition: “Fully 90 percent of diesel truck buyers are men. More than 84 percent identify as white. Most strikingly of all, truckers have a ram-tough party ID. According to one analysis, Republicans purchase eight heavy-duty trucks for every one purchased by a Democrat.”
Geographically, “deep-red districts” in so-called flyover America are particularly vulnerable because diesel comprises a higher share of their fuel consumption, notes the Washington Post: “This is especially the case in farming communities, where diesel powers the fuel-thirsty tractors and other machinery that the agriculture industry relies on.”
White, farm-state, pickup truck driving men — those same macho MAGAs who supposedly approach Trump with “tears in their eyes” to praise their savior are now crying over the eye-popping digital readouts following their tank fill-ups. Two tractor-trailer truckers, one in Florida and the other from West Virginia, recently went viral on social media after sharing their $1,000-plus diesel charges at the pump.
Meanwhile, on the campaign trail panicked Republican congressional and gubernatorial nominees are desperately — and insincerely — trying distance themselves from Trump’s destructive tariff, trade, and foreign policies that have spiked fuel prices.
Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson, who snubbed Vice President JD Vance during his recent visit to the Hawkeye State, is especially terrified. Despite voting repeatedly to support Trump’s Iran war, the duplicitous Senate candidate recently pirouetted by calling to end it, citing the war’s effects on rising fuel prices in her state. Two of Hinson’s Iowa US House colleagues, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, wrestled up enough phony courage to join five other House Republicans who recently cast votes for a resolution limiting Trump’s war power authority in Iran.
So panicked about diesel prices are Hinson, Miller-Meeks, and Nunn that all three Iowa Republicans joined the handful of Republicans calling for a US diesel export ban in a desperate effort to lower pump prices before voters head to the polls. Just imagine the angry earfuls these Hawkeye State Republicans are getting from their diesel-dependent farmers, truckers, and other constituents.
For these cowardly GOPers, Trump’s corruption, human rights abuses, vanity projects, bureaucratic destruction, massive deficits, targeting of political opponents, and coddling of China and Russia were insufficient deal breakers. But surging diesel prices? Apparently, that was the step-too-far that caused these vulnerable and self-serving Republicans to finally break ranks.
Oil slicks
Trump is scrambling to shift blame for rising diesel prices and peddle short-term solutions.
First, he tried to fault Ukraine for diesel prices, citing the country’s successful strikes on Russian oil refineries. Trump’s excuse is comical, given that he is more than 600 days into a second term during which he promised to end the Russia-Ukraine war on Day 1.
Next, Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent floated the idea of imposing a 90-day export ban on diesel processed by American refineries. Presumably, their hope is that the ban would temporarily inflate domestic supplies, thereby driving down pump prices before the November midterms.
However, in response to almost every other brilliant Trump economic “solution” from tariffs to trade wars, a chorus of voices immediately warned this foolish idea would backfire.
“The blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn’t work. If you can’t export the diesel that comes out of our refineries, you run out of places to store it, and you have to reduce US refining, which would put upward pressure on gasoline prices and jet fuel prices.”
More biased criticism from some Trump-deranged liberal economist? Nope: That was Trump’s own Energy Secretary and former oil executive Chris Wright. The Economist magazine and the European Union quickly echoed Wright’s warnings.
Pumped up Democrats
The doubling of diesel prices during Donald Trump’s second term is the perfect storm culmination of his disastrous economic policies.
Were he trying to raise the cost of diesel, Trump would be hard pressed to improve upon the combination of trade wars, tariffs, and a Strait of Hormuz-choking Mideast war. At this point, he may as well propose doubling the 24.4 cents per gallon federal diesel tax — at least that would generate new federal revenues to offset his record-setting budget deficits.
Only seven nations consume more diesel per capita than the United States. The doubling of diesel prices during Trump’s term is creating economic pain across the country, especially in the deep-red corners of Trump country. Diesel gas has emerged as the sleeper issue of the 2026 midterm campaign, fueling Democratic hopes of flipping both chambers of Congress, capturing governors’ offices, and gaining state legislative majorities.
As for Diesel Don, a man who probably never in his adult life filled a car tank at a service station, well, he seems to have run out of gas.
That’s it for this week
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Thanks for reading.
The top of the poster on the building seems to have been cut off. I guess above the Liberty Bell the words that were cut off were "Stabbed In".
I don't care why Republican voters have turned against him. Elect Dems, and all those other issues will be back on the table.
There is no fixing the situation with Iran.
It's going to take a long time to put the federal government into good shape, bring down inflation, restore health access, protect the environment, and do justice.
Let's start now. Vote D