The AAA national average price for regular gasoline held at $4.457 per gallon on Monday, a new record headed into the Memorial Day driving season and up $1.28 year-over-year. Tennessee crossed $4 per gallon for the first time. [1][2] The May 4 paper's account of US gas prices printing $4.45 as the Energy Secretary said they had likely peaked nine days ago recorded the contradiction at Day 9. Today is Day 11. The contradiction widens.

The Energy Secretary's April 23 statement — that gasoline prices "have probably already peaked" given the administration's release of strategic petroleum reserve barrels and its enforcement of price-discipline measures across major refiners — was made when the AAA national average sat at $4.371. The intervening eleven days have produced an additional 8.6-cent increase. The slope is not steep, but it is consistent. Each of the last eleven trading days has produced a higher daily print than the day before, and the cumulative move is the clearest factual repudiation of an administration economic claim since the secretary took office.

Tennessee's crossing of $4 per gallon is the day's specific marker. The state's average had held below $4 throughout the spring; Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga regional averages all crossed simultaneously over the weekend, with Knoxville crossing Monday morning. [3] The state's relatively low pre-2026 baseline — Tennessee held below the national average by roughly 25 cents through 2024 and 2025 — means the crossing has a different political register than coastal states' similar moves. Tennessee voters supported the administration in 2024 by 24 points; the crossing is the kind of regional pricing event that tends to be used in the cycle's economic narratives.

The Brent benchmark closed Monday at $114 per barrel, up 5 percent for the session. [4] The crude move is the first-order driver of the gasoline retail print: an approximate 60-65 percent passthrough rate from crude to retail gasoline, with a one-to-two-week lag, means Brent's move from approximately $98 in mid-April to $114 Monday should produce an additional 9-12 cents per gallon at the pump in the next two weeks even if Brent moves no further. The Memorial Day weekend gasoline retail price is therefore likely to print between $4.55 and $4.65 absent an intervening crude correction.

The administration's policy options have narrowed. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, drawn down to approximately 350 million barrels by January 2026 from its 2022 high of 720 million barrels, has limited remaining capacity for additional emergency releases. Targeted refining-capacity policies have produced limited measurable retail effect. Federal gasoline tax suspension, floated in early April, would reduce the pump price by 18.4 cents per gallon under standard passthrough assumptions but requires congressional action that has not advanced.

Fox Business's coverage of the $4.45 print emphasized the Memorial Day driving-season approach without naming the contradiction with the secretary's April 23 statement. [5] The Fox 34 (Tennessee) and Action News 5 (Memphis) coverage of the state-level crossing carried the record straight as a regional story. [6] No major national outlet has yet anchored the eleven-day contradiction. The paper's standing position — that the contradiction is the story — converts to a Day 11 confirmation rather than a forecast.

The political register is the Memorial Day weekend itself. Memorial Day-Friday-through-Monday gasoline demand is the year's third-highest forecast period, behind July 4 weekend and the August construction-cycle peak. The AAA Monday print at the start of the holiday window typically prefigures the entire summer season's directional curve; a record print twenty-five days before the holiday compresses the political timeline. The administration's Memorial Day gasoline-price talking points have been redrafted within the last week, per Energy Department officials cited anonymously in industry reporting. The Energy Secretary's April 23 claim has not been retracted, restated, or contextualized publicly.

Goldman's standing call — that another month of Hormuz operating tension produces Brent above $100 throughout 2026 — is the structural backdrop. [7] Brent's Monday close at $114 is consistent with that path, not the Energy Secretary's path. The two registers are forecasting different summers. The Goldman path, anchored by physical-supply constraints from Iranian production restrictions, OPEC+ baseline-recalibration mechanics, and Hormuz transit-risk premium, has the better fit to the day's tape. The administration's path, anchored by SPR releases and expected refining throughput increases, has not yet produced the offset the secretary's April 23 statement implied.

The ten-day contradiction noted in Saturday's column extended to eleven days Monday. By Friday it will be fifteen. The Energy Secretary's peak claim is now older than the holiday window the gas price will define.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco