The Consumer Price Index remained steady at 3.4% on an annual basis in August, the Labor Department reports Friday. But the month-over-month increase was 0.4%, from 0.1% in July. The monthly increase less food and energy was 0.3%. The gasoline index for August over July was +3.9%, with energy up 2.1% and shelter up 0.3%. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]
•Read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s reflections on the 9/11 attacks of 25 years ago in The Gray Area.
Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn Live! – It’s the Red Scare all over again for the Republican Party as indicated by the GOP’s midterm convention featuring President Trump and Vice President JD Vance, in Dallas, Wednesday and Thursday. Politico’s wrap-up feature on the convention leads with a photo of a couple wearing white t-shirts with the words in red on back; “America No Commies!”
“This midterm, we face the most dangerous, radical and frankly weird Democratic candidates in American history,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), chairman of the National Republican Senate Committee told the convention crowd. While Trump claimed capacity crowds, most news organizations showed many empty seats.
Republicans have made Abdul el-Sayed, the Democratic Party’s Senate candidate for Michigan their chief bogeyman in this tactic, NPR’s Tamara Keith noted on Morning Edition.
The party’s main focus was painting Democrats as too extreme, according to Politico, on the convention stage, in private meetings near the American Airlines Center in Dallas-area hotels and in television advertising between live coverage.
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Diesel Breaches $6 – The national average price of a gallon of diesel fuel jumped 7.83 cents to $6.0556 Friday, according to the AAA. That’s up $2.3691 over the end of February, before the war on Iran began. Regular unleaded is $4.295, up 1.8 cents over Thursday and $1.4788 higher than February 27. --TL
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THURSDAY 9/10/26
Bribe?
Trump Offers $5,000 for GOP Majorities – President Trump’s has offered in his nearly two-hour speech to the Republican midterm convention to pay $5,000 to every adult citizen only if the GOP maintains majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. It is likely illegal (though Trump has Supreme Court immunity from prosecution) and it would cost taxpayers about $1 trillion, according to The New York Times.
Is it a bribe?
You do not need to vote for congressional Republican candidates in the November 3 midterm elections for the federal government to pay out $1 trillion. You need only hope majorities nationwide vote to maintain or improve Republicans’ thin majorities in both chambers.
One caveat, the BBC World Service reports, is that American citizens must spend that $5,000 in the US.
“We don’t want you to go to Canada to spend the money,” he said. “We don’t want you to go to China, to Germany.”
While Trump in his GOP convention speech in Dallas conceded that any president’s party typically loses Congress members in the midterms – “we’re going to change that,” he said – he is pulling every lever he can to reverse that trend this November.
Trump’s executive order to place restrictions on mail-in ballots distributed by states remains in limbo as SCOTUS considers its legality, but it’s enough to cause suspicion and confusion among voters.
Elsewhere in Trump’s Speech … Though ‘The Trump Dividend,’ as the president calls it, seems to acknowledge that middle- and working-class Americans are suffering increasing food and energy costs under his administration, Trump nevertheless referred again to the “fake” affordability issue in his speech.
He also said he is not getting proper credit for his success in the war on Iran: “I should get something out of it. The Trump Strait.”
Where are the Republicans? … The American Airlines Center in Dallas had many empty seats as most Republican congressional candidates in battleground states avoided the Dallas midterm convention for the hustings, the NYT reports. One exception is Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, who is in a statistical dead heat against Democrat James Talarico for retiring Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s seat. Paxton happily attended after accepting $10 million for his campaign from Trump’s political action committee, Make America Great Again Inc.
Then there’s Fetterman … Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s appearance was either the biggest, or perhaps more accurately the only, surprise in Dallas. Fetterman, who is the Senate swing-vote yang to Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) swing-vote yin appeared on video screen to introduce Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick.
“Yes, I’m a Democrat,” Fetterman said. “Why am I talking to you? Because, well, I’m a common-sense Democrat. … We’ll work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life, right here in the steel valley.”
Democrats worry Fetterman will switch parties after the midterms. If he doesn’t switch, expect him to be primaried in 2028.
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Happy Holidays – The Washington Post claims this as a scoop, though we first spotted the news item under an “Exclusive” banner in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal: Natalie Harp – yes, the portable printer executive assistant constantly at the president’s side – communications advisor Margo Martin and Deputy Director of Oval Office Operations Chamberlain Harris each received $45,000 cash gifts from President Trump as holiday bonuses at the end of 2025. Each make $150,000 in annual salaries.
The disclosure also noted a $25,000 cash gift to Walt Nauta, the director of Oval Office operations, which means he’s Harris’ boss. Nauta, whose salary is $175,000 per year, was indicted in June 2023 with Trump in a federal case involving classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago after the president’s first term.
WaPo reporter Kat Zakrewski told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition Thursday that it is not clear whether Trump paid Nauta and the three female aides from his own money. Inskeep replied that it’s not a pejorative to point out that Trump has bragged he pays for nothing with his own money.
Wherever the $155,000 in bonuses came from, University of Minnesota law Prof. Richard Painter told The Wall Street Journal the gifts could be breaking federal law that prohibits government employees from accepting outside salaries and bonuses.
The appearance of a bribe-thing, you know.
“If you want to take a tip, don’t work for the government,” Painter, who was White House ethics officer in President George W. Bush’s administration, added. “I mean, it’s not the Fifth Avenue doorman.”
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – National average for a gallon of unleaded regular is $4.277 Thursday, according to the AAA, up 5.25 cents over Wednesday and up $1.4608 over February 27. Diesel is $5.9773, up 3.49 cents over Wednesday and $2.2908 versus late February, when the Strait of Hormuz was still open to oil tanker traffic. –TL
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Iran War, Week 23
WEDNESDAY 9/9/26
Let’s Get This Strait – Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz may be restricting the flow of oil tankers, but the US blockade there is damaging Iran to the point its leadership is escalading the war. Lead negotiator and speaker of Iran’s parliament Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf on Sunday said the era of “proportionate responses” to American attacks is over.
On Tuesday, the US military said it had destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in response to Iran’s attempted strikes on a US Navy warship, The New York Times reports. [The US reportedly gave the oil tankers enough warning for their crews to evacuate, NPR’s Morning Edition reports.]
Iran said it had launched strikes on a base in Jordan used by US forces. Three days earlier, Iran made its first known attempt at striking an American military vessel. Iran also has reportedly captured an American underwater drone. The US military says the drone is an old, early model with dated technology.
And so it goes.
More than six months into his six-week war, President Trump can claim “victory” over Iran by cutting off its oil exports and squeeze its already damaged economy, as Iran has restricted tankers navigating the Strait of Hormuz, and funding Houthis who have threatened Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure as global oil prices breach $100 per barrel.
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Sanctions on Israeli Settlers – British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced an import ban on all goods from Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Tuesday (Time magazine). Charging UK leadership with “antisemitism,” the Israeli government ordered the British consulate in East Jerusalem closed.
The UK sanctions lead a coordinated effort by 12 governments to restrict trade with the Israeli settlers.
Miliband told the House of Commons; “The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists.”
The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights has counted 80 attacks carried out by Israeli settlers that resulted in Palestinian casualties or damage to their property, between August 11th and 24th.
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Smithsonian Secretary ‘Retires’ – Lonnie Bunch, the first Black secretary of the 21-museum Smithsonian complex in Washington, D.C., told NPR’s All Things Considered Tuesday he is stepping down “because I’m old as dirt.”
Bunch, 73, is also the first historian to lead the Smithsonian, where he has worked for 38 years. He was named secretary of the institution in 2019 and is founding director of the National Museum of African American History & Culture, which was established in 2003 and opened in its permanent location in 2016.
Addressing employees at the Smithsonian Tuesday, Bunch was less sanguine about his “retirement.”
“I may be going away, but I’m still going to be a pain in the ass to some people,” he said, according to The Atlantic Daily’s account of his departure. Bunch will be more effective fighting against the Trump administration in its culture war on the institution, according to the report.
President Trump in July signed an executive order calling for signage to be added to the National Museum of American History warning of its “inaccurate” and “partisan” presentation of history.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – Brent Crude topped $100 per barrel on the global market Tuesday, and AAA’s national average for a gallon of unleaded regular gas Wednesday is up 7.31 cents to $4.2245 as a result. Unleaded regular now is up $1.4083 over February 27. Diesel is $5.9424 Wednesday, up 4.12 cents over Tuesday and $2.2559 higher than the beginning of the war on Iran. –TL
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TUESDAY 9/8/26
Canada Strikes Back in Trump Trade War
Good Luck with Trump-a-palooza – Republican lawmakers hope Trump-a-palooza, the Wednesday-Thursday midterm GOP convention in Dallas this week will give the president a chance to draw a contrast with Democrats rather than prosecute his personal grievances, Politico reports. On NPR Tuesday, Jonah Goldberg, founding editor of The Dispatch told Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep he fears Trump-a-palooza could become “the political version of a ShamWow infomercial.”
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US-Canada Trade War, Week 1 – Hours before Canada imposed retaliatory 50% tariffs on approximately US$20 billion on American-import clothing, cheese, metal parts, wood products and other items, President Trump Truth Socialed, “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!”
Montreal-based Bombardier builds most of the regional jetliners favored by US carriers for short- to medium-distance flights. The company responded to Trump’s ALL CAPS social media post that it makes such crucial components as wings in California and Texas, The New York Times reports, and a US boycott would hurt American factory workers there.
Prime Minister Mark Carney made it clear after trade talks with the US collapsed in August that Canada would counteract Trump’s taxes on its goods. Carney described Canada as being “at war” and Canadian officials would respond “dollar for dollar” to US duties.
After the US had to refund much of last year’s “Liberation Day” tariffs after the Supreme Court struck them down, the Trump White House cited Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (paging Smoot-Hawley) to add 50% duties to motor vehicles, alcoholic beverages and dairy products.
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Houthis Hit Saudi Oil – Brent crude inched near $100 per barrel after Iran-backed Houthi militants struck Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reports. Watch for a bleak day on Wall Street and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off more than 1% by mid-morning as a result.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – AAA’s national average for a gallon of unleaded regular gas is $4.1514, up 0.4 cents from last Friday and $1.3352 over February 27. Diesel inched up from its record price late last week to $5.9012, up 5.12 cents over Friday and $2.2147 higher than since the beginning of the war on Iran -- costs freight and delivery companies using diesel (most of them) will pass on to you. –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa