Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Sunday accused President Donald Trump of driving up the cost of living for American families through what he called a “war of choice” in the Middle East, posting a pointed message on X that tied together three of the most politically volatile pressure points of the fall: grocery prices, gas prices and household bills. The post landed two days after a new federal inflation report showed price growth accelerating in August, and as national gas prices climbed to their highest level of the year.
“Americans are feeling the effects of Donald Trump’s war of choice in the grocery store, at the gas pump, and on their bills,” Pritzker wrote in the 2:18 p.m. post on September 13, 2026. The message was brief but direct, placing blame for kitchen-table economic strain squarely on the administration’s handling of the ongoing conflict with Iran.
What Prompted the Post
Pritzker’s statement came in direct response to NBC News reporting on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ August Consumer Price Index, published September 11. That report found the CPI rose 0.4% for the month, an annualized rate of 3.4%, with core inflation — which excludes food and energy — coming in higher than economists had forecast. The data showed the increase occurred even before renewed fighting in the Middle East pushed oil prices sharply higher toward the end of the month.
Gasoline was singled out as a major driver of the August numbers, with the BLS finding that the gasoline index alone rose 3.9% for the month, accounting for more than a third of the total monthly increase across all measured items. Shelter costs rose 0.3% and food costs rose 0.1% over the same period, while the cost of computer software, accessories and related electronics — a category BLS linked in part to surging global demand for AI-related components — posted its largest annual increase on record at 25.4%.
“America still has an inflation problem,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in reaction to the report, a sentiment echoed across market commentary in the hours after the data was released. Citigroup economists went further, writing that “the fate of the September meeting lies with August CPI” — a reference to the Federal Reserve’s upcoming policy meeting, held Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, where officials are weighing whether to raise interest rates in response to persistent price pressure.
Oil Prices Surge as Fighting Continues
The inflation report’s numbers, analysts cautioned, may already understate the true picture. By the Friday after the CPI release, U.S. crude oil was trading around $100 per barrel and international Brent crude near $105 per barrel — roughly 20% higher than prices in mid-August — as fighting between the U.S. and Iran continued in the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi forces advanced against Saudi energy infrastructure. The same day, the U.S. average price for diesel fuel crossed $6 per gallon for the first time on record.
Retail gasoline prices have followed a similar trajectory. According to AAA, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline stood at $4.313 on September 13 — the day of Pritzker’s post — up from roughly $4.07 a week earlier and well above the $3.14 average recorded at the same point last year. Trading Economics separately reported the national average climbing to $4.30 a gallon on September 11, citing continued Middle East instability, Houthi advances in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and Saudi crude output falling to its lowest level since 1990.
Diesel prices have moved in tandem, with AAA data showing the fuel used to transport most of the nation’s food and consumer goods setting a new national record above $5.85 per gallon in early September — surpassing the previous high set during the 2022 inflation spike. President Trump has acknowledged the strain at the pump, telling reporters this past week that relief may not arrive until after the November elections. “Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,” he said Wednesday.
A Sustained Pattern of Criticism
Sunday’s post was not an isolated jab. Pritzker has repeatedly used the phrase “war of choice” to describe Trump’s military engagement with Iran since at least May, when he told reporters in Chicago that Illinoisans were “all paying more than $1.50 more” per gallon “as a result of this war of choice by Donald Trump,” and called the conflict an “illegal endeavor” affecting the entire national economy.
In June, Pritzker sharpened the framing further, telling reporters that “Donald Trump’s tariffs and his war of choice in Iran have Illinoisans paying higher prices at the grocery store, at the gas pump, at the pharmacy, frankly everywhere,” and argued that inflation under the current administration was “worse than when he took office.” Earlier in the spring, in an April post on X, Pritzker had listed a string of grievances — “Gas prices are up. Measles is back. Farms are folding. Tariffs are raising grocery costs. Americans have been sent to fight another Middle East war.” — before closing with the question, “WHERE IS DONALD TRUMP?”
Tariffs as a Parallel Track of Attack
Pritzker has paired his war-related criticism with an extended campaign against the administration’s tariff policy. In February, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize Trump’s sweeping tariffs, Pritzker sent the president a public invoice demanding a $1,700 refund for every Illinois household — a total of $8,679,261,600 — writing that the tariffs “wreaked havoc on farmers, enraged our allies, and sent grocery prices through the roof.”
In March, Pritzker joined a coalition of 19 governors urging congressional leaders to act on tariff refunds and separately pressed for passage of the Tariff Refund Act of 2026, arguing in his own letter that Illinois families “paid the price through higher grocery bills and rising consumer costs” while farmers lost export markets. By August, with the refund still unpaid, Pritzker sent a follow-up letter to the White House noting that 165 days had passed since his original invoice and demanding the administration “provide direct relief to Illinois working families as some of the nation’s largest and wealthiest corporations receive billions of dollars in refunds.”
Political Stakes Heading Into the Midterms
The renewed criticism arrives as inflation and affordability emerge as central themes of the 2026 midterm cycle, with the president’s party historically vulnerable to economic headwinds in off-year elections. Separate BLS data released alongside the August CPI report showed real average hourly earnings for U.S. workers fell 0.1% from July to August and were down 0.3% from a year earlier, compounding pressure on household budgets already strained by elevated prices.
Market reaction to the inflation data was swift: odds of a Federal Reserve rate hike at this week’s meeting jumped from under 70% to nearly 90% in the minutes following the report’s release, with odds of a follow-on October hike rising to almost 60%. A rate increase would add to pressure already building in the housing market, where the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbed above 7% last week amid a surge in Treasury yields.
Pritzker, who is seeking a third term as governor and has positioned himself as one of the Trump administration’s most vocal Democratic critics nationally, has consistently framed both the war and the tariffs as compounding, self-inflicted burdens on ordinary Americans rather than unavoidable costs of foreign policy or trade strategy. Sunday’s post extended that argument into the latest economic data cycle, linking a war now nearing seven months in duration directly to the prices Americans are paying at checkout counters and fuel pumps nationwide.