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      Twitter Said to Delay Changes to Check Mark Badges Until After Midterms

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      Users and employees had raised concerns that Elon Musk’s plan to give check marks to those who paid a monthly fee could be misused to sow discord.Twitter is delaying the rollout of verification check marks to subscribers of its new $7.99 a month subscription service until after Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to an internal post viewed by The New York Times and two people with knowledge of the decision.The company made the call a day after announcing that it was rolling out the program for people to receive a verification check mark on their profile for the monthly fee. On Saturday, the company had said in notes accompanying a new update to the Twitter app that the paid verification system was now a feature of the website’s subscription service, Twitter Blue.“Power to the people,” the announcement said. “Your account will get a blue check mark, just like the celebrities, companies, and politicians you already follow.”But many Twitter users and employees raised concerns that the new pay-for-play badges could cause confusion ahead of Tuesday’s elections because users could easily create verified accounts — say, posing as President Biden or as lawmakers or news outlets and publishing false information about voting results — which could potentially sow discord. In an internal Slack channel on Saturday, one Twitter employee asked why the social network was “making such a risky change before elections, which has the potential of causing election interference.”A manager working on the verification badge project responded on Sunday that “we’ve made the decision to move the launch of this release to Nov. 9, after the election.”Twitter, whose communications team has been almost entirely laid off, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nov. 9 is the day immediately following Tuesday’s election, and many races may still be undecided as votes are tallied.Charging for the verification check mark program had been one of the changes made by Elon Musk, who took over Twitter late last month in a $44 billion buyout. The billionaire is under financial pressure from the deal, which he partly financed with $13 billion in debt. Twitter has long been unprofitable and, like other social media companies, it faces a weakening in digital advertising spending as the global economy tips toward a recession.On Friday, Mr. Musk laid off roughly half of Twitter’s employees, or about 3,700 jobs. He said at the time that he had no choice but to make the cuts because the company was losing $4 million a day.Mr. Musk and his advisers have also been discussing various ways to wring more money out of Twitter. In addition to the check mark program, they have talked about adding paid direct messages — which would let users send private messages to high-profile users — to the service, as well as “paywalled” videos, which would mean that certain videos could not be viewed unless users paid a fee. They have also discussed reviving Vine, a onetime short-form video platform.On Sunday, Mr. Musk said Twitter would continue to crack down on accounts that pretend to be other people. “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Mr. Musk said in a tweet. More

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      How the Price of Gas Became America’s Most Important Political Issue

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      President Biden knows the political power of the price of gasoline.About two weeks ago, fearing what an uptick in gas prices might do to Democrats at the ballot box in the midterms, Mr. Biden announced the release of 15 million barrels from the United States’ emergency petroleum stockpile in an effort to drive down prices. A gallon now costs $3.78 on average compared with $5.03 five months ago, but that is still higher than what Americans want to pay.To show he means business, Mr. Biden went a step further this week, calling on Congress to consider a windfall profits tax on oil companies, which are reaping record gains since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a spike in oil prices. “It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering,” Mr. Biden said.As he contemplates whether these measures will be enough to save his party on Tuesday, he seems to be recalling the early days of his political career. Mr. Biden entered the Senate in 1973, at the age of 30, just as the energy crisis of the 1970s was changing life as Americans had known it. In October of that year, in response to America’s support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, OPEC’s Arab members imposed an embargo on the United States, sending prices soaring by more than sevenfold.To understand the consequences of this price hike, the young senator from Delaware hitched a ride on a 47,000-pound big rig hauling hollow-shell pipe for a 15-hour, 536-mile journey through five states. After talking to hundreds of angry truckers at a stop in Shiloh, Ohio, Mr. Biden was sympathetic. The winter storm he had just driven through was, he said, “nothing compared to the snow job truck drivers I met believe the government is handing them.”The energy situation would spell political trouble for President Richard Nixon, already deeply wounded by Watergate, as Americans blamed elected officials for their troubles. Millions of Americans were waiting in lines to fill up their tanks and feeling the pinch of higher prices on their family budgets. “What is worse than ‘Watergate’ and all the various charges against the president? Answer — the gas crisis in Bergen County,” a suburban New Jersey man wrote to his senator. “We the American People are tired of the lack of competent and effective leadership,” the Concerned Citizens of Maryland told Mr. Nixon.Jimmy Carter, then the governor of Georgia, accused his predecessors of “gross mismanagement” as he ran for president seeking to quell the energy crisis. But after his 1976 election, Mr. Carter wasn’t so lucky: A second oil shock struck in 1979, this one triggered by unrest in Iran. Prices soared again, up more than 1,000 percent since the start of the decade. “I’ll give it to you straight,” Mr. Carter said in 1979. “Each one of us will have to use less oil and pay more for it.”There was a “panic at the pumps,” as a New York service station representative called it at the time, leading to gas riots, violence, economic chaos and more. Long lines lasted for hours and soaring prices broke the dollar-a-gallon barrier, resulting in a sense of defeat and national decay. Americans are being “crucified on the cross of inflation,” a group of Chicago truckers said. “People are freaking out,” the California Energy Commission’s chairman said. No one came in for more blame than Mr. Carter. “Energy affects the life of every goddamn American, and most of them are mad at us,” a White House aide told Newsweek. “Energy is our Vietnam,” another official said.In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Mr. Carter — the first Democratic president of Mr. Biden’s political career — in a landslide.By the end of the 1970s, the price of a gallon of gasoline had become one of the most explosive issues in American political life. It still is. When presidents see gas prices tick up, they inevitably get a sick feeling in their stomachs. Rising gas prices tend to correlate with a decline in presidential approval ratings, which in turn erodes support for the incumbent party at the polls.In times of economic instability, gas prices are the most visible and easily understandable gauge of how the nation is faring: Outsize placards on every street corner and at every rest stop are a constant reminder for many citizens that times are tough, neon signs that shine projections of pocketbook pain down to the thousandth of a decimal. You don’t need to know much about macroeconomics or public policy to know that you’re being squeezed.America lives under the shadow of King Oil because our lives are organized around our cars and our cars run on gasoline.The roots of this dependence go back to before the 1970s oil shocks, to the postwar years when America’s economy boomed, thanks to cheap and plentiful gas. The country was building a massive system of interstate highways made possible by the 1956 Interstate Highway Act; developers erected single-family suburban homes that required a car trip just to pick up a pint of milk; the government failed to invest in mass transit. Gas stations competed with giveaways and free windshield washings. The drive-in movie theater and the drive-through restaurant had become icons of American culture. Cars grew and grew in size until they became living rooms on wheels. With their tail fins, luxurious interiors and powerful engines, cars were the embodiment of American freedom.Until they weren’t. “The great American ride is ending,” the title character in “Rabbit Is Rich,” John Updike’s iconic novel of late-’70s America, thinks to himself as he surveys his car lot. Instead of singing about the open road, Johnny Cash made commercials, paid for by oil companies, about the need to “drive slow and save gas.”Gas lines in Midtown Manhattan in May 1979.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAppeals to conservation went unheeded. Americans refused to consume less; we resisted developing new forms of energy. As a result, the nation was running in place. Americans wanted everything to be the same.By the time Mr. Reagan left office in 1989, there were over 30 million more cars on the road than there had been at the start of the energy crisis in 1973. And in spite of calls for energy independence, America got more and more of its oil from the Persian Gulf. It was not a surprise, then, that President George H.W. Bush, himself an oilman, launched a military operation in 1991, Operation Desert Storm, in response to Saddam Hussein’s attack on Kuwait. “We cannot allow any tyrant to practice economic blackmail,” he said.President Bill Clinton’s term did little to wean America off its oil addiction. During his administration, S.U.V.s, which were not subject to fuel efficiency standards, were coming to dominate the market. No wonder that in 2000, as gas prices spurted up, in advance of the election, Mr. Clinton released oil from the strategic reserve, a fail-safe created in the 1970s. His solution to higher prices was to flood the market with product rather than to stem demand, hoping to bolster the electoral prospects of Al Gore, his vice president and a passionate environmentalist.That story has continued to play out. In 2008, congressional Republicans attempted to lay the blame for record-high prices on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling it the “Pelosi Premium.” The strategy failed, given the collapse of the economy when George W. Bush was in the White House. But the effort reflected the political reality of prices at the pump, still the case today. The question is: How long can this last?Mr. Biden has watched as his party’s political fortunes have been driven by the ups and downs of energy prices since the early 1970s. Over those nearly 50 years he has undoubtedly discovered the tension at the heart of this: While politicians live and die in the short term, it’s only long-term policies that can offer an enduring solution.Gas prices are down now, but are they down enough to help his party next week? And will they stay down ahead of the 2024 presidential election? Those questions are most likely on the top of Mr. Biden’s mind.In 1981, when Mr. Reagan, soon after taking office, used his executive authority to get rid of the price controls on oil that had come into effect during the crisis, Mr. Biden objected. “We must continue to fight for more responsible energy economic policy,” he wrote in an op-ed. By that he meant a “permanent” windfall tax on oil companies, which at the time were reaping record profits. The taxes would pay for relief from the “excessive costs” of energy.In the 1970s, Democrats thought the oil hikes that followed war and revolution in the Middle East required an equally drastic political response: price controls, rationing and corporate profit caps. Today, with OPEC price hawks taking advantage of another war, polls suggest that Mr. Biden would see enormous political and electoral dividends by imposing temporary price and profit controls on the industry. Some economists, like the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, agree.So, too, do many members of Congress. “We know that big oil companies are exploiting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to drive up prices at the pump for American families,” Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat, recently told me. “This sort of profiteering is unacceptable and we need to put a stop to it. A windfall profits tax would help us take on corporate power and deliver relief directly to families.”Now Mr. Biden is listening to the lessons of his long career. His release from the strategic petroleum reserve comes after a similar move nearly a year ago, followed up by a failed effort to get OPEC to increase its production and the jawboning of oil companies. “You should not be using your profits to buy back stock or for dividends,” the president said. “Not now. Not while a war is raging.” Instead, he said, “Bring down the price you charge at the pump.” Or else — as he told the companies this week.But just as he is trying to ease Americans’ pain, he also recognizes that the permanent solution comes from weaning ourselves off fossil fuels from foreign powers, like Russia and Saudi Arabia, that see oil as a geopolitical weapon. Even a young Joe Biden understood this: In the weeks after the 1973 Arab embargo, he was one of five senators who voted against the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and instead supported funding mass transit.What was never really on the table was using less gas and driving fewer cars. President Carter tried to solve the energy crisis, in part, with a famous prime-time speech asking the United States to change its wasteful, self-indulgent ways, as Americans were waiting in gas lines. It was a colossal failure. The installation of solar panels on the White House roof, when Mr. Carter promised that 20 percent of all energy would come from the sun and other renewable sources by 2000, also fell flat.Mr. Biden knows this. That’s why he has worked hard to make renewable alternatives a reality with the Inflation Reduction Act, a climate bill investing historic amounts into a green transition. And as much as he, like so many presidents, champions himself as a “car guy” who loves his 1967 Corvette Stingray, he has also celebrated recent pushes like Ford’s to phase out combustion engines.But those changes take time. Just as they have since the 1970s, voters want relief and they want it now. In 1973, Mr. Biden said his constituents felt that “the federal government isn’t listening.” Nearly half a century later, as Americans take to the polls, Mr. Biden wants them to know “who is standing with them and who is only looking out for their own bottom line.”Even as Mr. Biden might get minimal short-term benefits from his energy and climate policies — and minimal relief in gas prices in the near future — history may look back on his record as a turning point, when America didn’t just start ending its gas addiction but went further into alternatives that began making our country and our politics less in thrall to King Oil.Meg Jacobs teaches history and public affairs at Princeton and is the author of “Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America” and “Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Joe Biden and the Parable of the Raisin Bran

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      A remark in a local television interview undercut the president’s message: that his administration was tackling rising prices for gasoline and groceries.It escaped the notice of most in the national political press.But a stray comment President Biden made in a local television interview last week spoke volumes about Democrats’ struggle to find a winning message on inflation.“By the way,” Biden began, “the food prices — the main driver of food prices — is not the price of beef and eggs, etc., although they’re up. It’s packaged goods, packaged goods.”Then the gaffe: “You’re going to see people not buying Kellogg’s Raisin Bran. You’re going to see them buying other raisin bran, which is going to be a dollar cheaper.”Needless to say, eat generic raisin bran is not exactly a poll-tested, winning message. Clips of that comment went viral on the right, racking up tens of thousands of views on conservative YouTube and TikTok channels.Perhaps the president was reading the business section of The New York Times, which reported this week on how food companies are banking huge profits. Or perhaps he was just falling into the politician’s trap of playing pundit, which is rarely a good idea.Either way, Biden’s remark undercut what he had just claimed seconds earlier — that his administration was succeeding in tackling rising prices for gasoline and groceries.“We’re getting them down,” he said. “I told you I’d bring them down. We’re bringing it down.”True for gas, less so for groceries. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve cranked up interest rates another notch, indicating that the people who can shape the U.S. economy don’t believe they have licked the inflation problem.More to the point, Biden’s raisin bran comment unintentionally revealed just how inconsistent the Democratic Party’s message on inflation has come across to voters.Some of it has been bad luck — above all, the fact that Biden took office during a pandemic that scrambled global supply chains, driving up costs that businesses then duly passed along to consumers. “We’re not as bad as Turkey” is a hard case to make at the polls.There were also costly communications mistakes along the way. Last spring, administration economists were insisting that inflation would be “transitory.” That assessment proved to be wildly optimistic, and Republicans have not let voters forget it.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.When the war in Ukraine drove a fresh jump in prices, Democrats deployed the phrase “Putin’s price hike” to try to mitigate the damage. There were also scattershot attempts at whacking Corporate America for “price-gouging” — meatpackers and oil companies being among the main villains — although some liberal economists questioned the logic.In remarks on inflation in May, Biden tried out a new phrase: “the ultra-MAGA agenda,” referring to a plan by Senator Rick Scott of Florida that would require Congress to reauthorize spending for Social Security and Medicare. Republicans, including Scott, have distanced themselves from the idea.Finally, with the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage in August, Democrats had accomplishments that they could credibly argue would address rising costs for families. The legislation included price caps for insulin and provisions allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs, for instance. In isolation, those policies were overwhelmingly popular, polls showed.But that sentiment may have been an illusion: Polls also indicated that only a third of voters had heard of the new law and that the majority did not believe it would reduce inflation.Biden has spoken about the economy in speeches far more often than any other subject; he has made 22 appearances since August for midterm-related events, according my count. Even so, progressives complain that Democratic candidates neither put significant resources or energy into promoting those achievements, nor do they adequately punish Republicans for their own positions.Democrats felt crippled, too, by the president’s poll numbers: Few candidates were eager to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a leader whose approval rating went negative in August 2021 and has hovered around the low 40s ever since.In a prime-time speech on Thursday, Biden made his closing pitch to voters, arguing about the threat Republicans posed to democracy — not about what he had done to address inflation. Even though he spoke about the economy earlier in the day, his democracy speech led the news.‘Hot dog, the Biden economic plan is working’Republicans, meanwhile, had a much simpler task in this election: blame Democrats for everything.In one telling episode recounted by Republican strategists, the National Republican Congressional Committee ran a small series of digital ads during the Fourth of July congressional recess in 2021 highlighting the cost of food. They resonated strongly with voters, even in focus groups run by Democrats.At the time, however, Democrats were still trying to convince the public that prices were not, in fact, rising.“Planning a cookout this year?” the White House said on Twitter. “Ketchup on the news. According to the Farm Bureau, the cost of a 4th of July BBQ is down from last year. It’s a fact you must-hear(d). Hot dog, the Biden economic plan is working. And that’s something we can all relish.”A graphic accompanying the tweet read: “The cost of a 4th of July cookout in 2021 is down $0.16 from last year.” In response, Representative Burgess Owens, a Republican of Utah, said on Twitter that the Biden administration was “bragging about saving us $0.04 on sliced cheese.”At the time, the Consumer Price Index had risen 5 percent between May 2020 and May 2021; the most recent numbers indicate that the index has climbed by 8.2 percent in the 12 months through September.Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, a former lawyer and the chairman of the Republicans’ House campaign arm, said in an interview that he was bringing his courtroom experience to the task of winning back the seats his party lost in 2018. He advised G.O.P. candidates to make Biden’s handling of inflation their top line of attack.“It’s something I learned when I was trying cases in front of juries,” Emmer said. “You figure out what the theme of the case is.” The same goes for politics, he said: “You know what your message is, and you hammer at it every single day.”“Democrats spent the last two years rescuing America’s small businesses, saving jobs, getting a pandemic under control and investing in America’s future,” Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York shot back. “Tom Emmer and his motley crew of MAGA extremists were hawking deadly conspiracy theories and ripping away 50 years of reproductive freedom — that’s what’s on the ballot Tuesday.”Grocery shopping in the Queens borough of New York City.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThey had a hammerHammer it they did. For election ads, Republican researchers clipped examples of Democratic politicians taking their cues from the White House and downplaying the rising costs early on.Ads running nonstop in Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District, for instance, show Representative Dan Kildee saying that inflation was “transitory.” In the state’s Seventh District, Republicans have tried to undercut Representative Elissa Slotkin’s bipartisan image with incessant commercials that claim she voted with Biden “100 percent of the time” and that she “doesn’t get” Americans’ financial struggles.“She voted for trillions in new spending. That’s fueling inflation. I’ll stop the out-of-control spending,” Slotkin’s opponent, Tom Barrett, says in one of them.Republicans have said much less about how they would address inflation if they retake the majority in Congress; economists are highly skeptical that cutting the federal budget when the economy is softening would help.But few Democrats have delivered as sharp a rejoinder as former President Barack Obama, who mocked Republican ideas at a recent campaign rally in Michigan.“When gas prices go up, when grocery prices go up, that takes a bite out of people’s paycheck,” Obama said. He added, “Republicans are having a field day running ads talking about it, but what is their actual solution to it?”“I’ll tell you: They want to gut Social Security, then Medicare, and then give some more tax breaks to the wealthy,” he continued. “And the reason I know that’s their agenda is, listen, that’s their answer to everything.”But there are few signs that the Democrats’ counterattacks are working. In polls, voters now give Republicans an enormous edge on who would do a better job on the economy. In the latest Wall Street Journal survey, only 27 percent of voters said that Biden’s policies “had a positive impact on the economy.”Forecasting models using economic indicators predict that Republicans will pick up as many as 45 House seats next week, though other factors could limit Democrats’ losses, and it’s anyone’s guess who will win the Senate.Emmer, for one, expressed bewilderment that Democrats did not have better answers to Republican attacks on inflation. As early as February 2021, he said, “We knew this is the issue, we knew it was coming.”But when some Democratic lawmakers voiced their concerns that spring about rising prices, he said, their leaders “refused to listen to them.”What to readRepublican candidates are focusing on crime and public safety, but their message is rooted not so much in data or policy as in voters’ feelings of unease. Julie Bosman, Jack Healy and Campbell Robertson have the details.Danny Hakim reports on Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, of Nevada and her Republican rival, Adam Laxalt. Both parties are shoveling money into a pivotal contest defined by two top issues, the economy and abortion.Early turnout is high in most states, Nick Corasaniti writes, and experts see broad Republican energy as well as Democratic enthusiasm in major battlegrounds. But changes in how people vote have added new uncertainty.Fueled by billionaires, political spending is again shattering records, Jonathan Weisman and Rachel Shorey report.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Biden Accuses Oil Companies of ‘War Profiteering’ and Threatens Windfall Tax

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      The president has been eager to redirect public anger over gas prices as Democrats try to keep power in Congress in the midterm elections.WASHINGTON — President Biden threatened on Monday to seek a new windfall profits tax on major oil and gas companies unless they ramp up production to curb the price of gasoline at the pump, an escalation of his battle with the energy industry just a week before the midterm elections.The president lashed out against the giant firms as several of them reported the latest surge in profits, which he called an “outrageous” bonanza stemming from Russia’s war on Ukraine. He warned them to use the money to expand oil supplies or return it to consumers in the form of price reductions.“If they don’t, they’re going to pay a higher tax on their excess profits and face other restrictions,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House. “My team will work with Congress to look at these options that are available to us and others. It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their responsibilities to this country, give the American people a break and still do very well.”The president’s embrace of new taxes on the energy industry heartened liberals in his party who have been urging him to take action for months. But it was more of a way to pressure the oil firms than a realistic policy prescription for the short term given that Congress is not even in session and would be even less likely to approve such a measure if Republicans capture one or both houses in next week’s election.Mr. Biden has been eager to redirect public anger over gas prices toward the oil industry and away from himself as Democrats try to overcome historical and popular headwinds to keep power on Capitol Hill. While the price at the pump has fallen significantly since topping out just above $5 a gallon in the summer, it is still much higher than when Mr. Biden took office and contributes to the overall inflation rate, which remains near a four-decade high.The president framed his case against the oil companies in terms that seemed clearly aimed at next week’s vote. “The American people are going to judge who is standing with them and who is only looking out for their own bottom line,” he said. “I know where I stand.”Republicans fired back at the president, faulting him for policies that they say discourage the energy industry from expanding capacity.The State of the WarGrain Deal: After accusing Ukraine of attacking its ships in Crimea, Russia withdrew from an agreement allowing the export of grain from Ukrainian ports. The move jeopardized a rare case of wartime coordination aimed at lowering global food prices and combating hunger.Turning the Tables: With powerful Western weapons and deadly homemade drones, Ukraine now has an artillery advantage over Russia in the southern Kherson region, erasing what had been a critical asset for Moscow.Fears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine. The alliance has shown signs of fraying with the approach of the U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.“Haven’t American families suffered enough from President Biden’s damaging attack on American-made energy?” asked Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. “Desperately trying to salvage the midterm elections, now he’s proposing another dangerous policy that will increase energy prices and energy poverty while making America more vulnerable to foreign countries for our daily energy needs.”The oil industry accused the president of politicking, noting that gas prices have come down by roughly a quarter since summer. “Rather than taking credit for price declines and shifting blame for price increases,” said Mike Sommers, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, “the Biden administration should get serious about addressing the supply-and-demand imbalance that has caused higher gas prices and created long-term energy challenges.”Mr. Biden’s statement came just days after the oil giants reported another three months of flush coffers. Exxon Mobil brought in a record of nearly $20 billion in profits for the third quarter of the year, 10 percent higher than the previous quarter and its fourth consecutive quarter of robust earnings. Chevron reported $11.2 billion in profits, just below the record it set the quarter before. The European-based Shell and Total Energies companies similarly reported that profits more than doubled from the same period a year ago.The five biggest oil companies generated more than $50 billion in profits in the second quarter, and the International Energy Agency has reported that total net income for the world’s oil and gas producers will double this year from last to a record $4 trillion. “Today’s high fossil fuel prices have generated an unprecedented windfall for producers,” the agency said.A half-dozen of the largest firms earned more in profit over the past six months than in all of last year and more than two and a half times what they earned in the same quarters of 2021, White House officials said. Mr. Biden said if the industry simply earned the same level of profits it has for 20 years, consumers would pay 50 cents less per gallon.The firms have used their profits in some cases for dividend increases and stock buybacks rather than increased production, which could bring down the price of oil and therefore trim their profits. Exxon Mobil raised its dividend on Friday, citing a commitment to “return excess cash” to shareholders.Mr. Biden has been sensitive to gas prices, an important barometer for the public mood. As the price at the pump hit record highs over the summer, the president’s approval rating slid to new lows, but as gas costs came down over the following three months, his own numbers improved. Likewise, according to polls, the rise and fall of gas prices is directly inverse to public feelings about whether the country is heading down the right or wrong track.Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, is so attentive to the fluctuations that he checks the average price every day and often posts messages on Twitter pointing out when it dips further.“If you are filling your gas tank this weekend, you are seeing one of the cheapest Saturdays of the year,” Mr. Klain tweeted on Saturday. “Gas prices continue to drop nationally,” he added on Monday morning.The current national average of $3.76 a gallon is about three pennies less than it was a month ago and about $1.25 below the June peak, but still far above the $2.39 it was when Mr. Biden took office, according to AAA.The issue flared recently when Saudi Arabia led the OPEC Plus cartel to cut production by up to two million barrels of oil a day just before the midterm elections, a move that Biden administration officials considered a betrayal of a private understanding to increase supplies rather than the other way around.A windfall profits tax would impose an excise levy on the output of domestic oil producers. Congress would establish the tax rate, which could differ between independent producers and the biggest companies. It would be the first windfall profits tax in the United States in more than three decades, but since earlier this year, 15 European countries have proposed or enacted such levies, including Britain, Italy and Spain, according to the Tax Foundation.Urged by President Jimmy Carter, Congress imposed a windfall profits tax in 1980 after a sharp increase in oil prices spurred by an OPEC embargo. Lawmakers were trying to offset large industry tax deductions, including a depletion allowance for older wells with exhausting deposits and an array of deductions for drilling.But domestic production fell and dependence on foreign oil increased, while forecasts of revenue from the windfall tax turned out to be overly optimistic. Congress repealed the tax in 1988 after oil prices fell.Industry executives said Mr. Biden’s proposal to revive the tax would not increase supplies. “It’s a horrible idea, small thinking,” said Patrick Montalban, the president of Montalban Oil and Gas, a producer in North Dakota and Montana. “It’s going to take away from exploration and production of domestic oil and gas. It’s that simple. Total politics.”Democrats who have pressed Mr. Biden to consider such a tax applauded his statement. “It’s time for Congress to stand up to Big Oil and bring relief to consumers, instead of corporate stock buybacks and bonuses,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has introduced windfall profits tax legislation.But some liberals were unhappy that Mr. Biden was using the threat to leverage production increases. “Drilling more won’t lower prices for U.S. consumers,” said Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, an advocacy group. “More investment in oil drilling will deepen our dependence on fossil fuels.”Investments in oil and gas exploration remain 17 percent below the 2019 level and half the level in 2014, when the oil business was enjoying a price boom, according to the International Energy Agency. Few new fields have been discovered in recent years, leading to ever-tightening supplies. And Wall Street has shied away from investing in hydrocarbons because of growing concerns about climate change.American oil production this year is averaging 11.87 million barrels a day, an increase of 4 percent from last year despite urging from the administration that companies drill and produce more. The number of rigs deploying has been increasing this year, although increases have slowed since summer.Shale oil production, which has been the engine of growth over the last decade, is expected to grow to roughly the level before the Covid-19 pandemic caused the 2020 economic downturn and collapse of oil prices.Peter Baker More

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      Why the Price of Gas Has Such Power Over Us

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      Ask Americans their outlook on the country — its future, its economy, its president — and their mood has risen and fallen in surveys this year in striking sync with the price of gas. Gas prices go up, and fear that the country is on the wrong track often does, too. Gas prices go down, and so does unhappiness with the president.It’s of course not the case that fuel prices alone dictate the optimism (or surliness) of the nation. But these patterns suggest that gas, distinct from other things we buy, wields real power over how Americans think about their personal circumstances, the wider economy and even the state of the nation. Yes, this year has been marked by economic uncertainty, Supreme Court shock waves, Jan. 6 revelations and enduring pandemic divides. But lurking in the background of it all has been the whipsawing price of gas.And it is, by the way, now trending down again with two weeks to go to the election.Gas Prices Spike; Confidence DipsConfidence in the economy and in the direction of the country fell as gas prices rose earlier this year. Then those patterns reversed as gas prices dropped. More

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      Fearing a New Shellacking, Democrats Rush for Economic Message

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      Democratic candidates, facing what increasingly looks like a reckoning in two weeks, are struggling to find a closing message on the economy that acknowledges the deep uncertainty troubling the electorate while making the case that they, not the Republicans, hold the solutions.For some time, the party’s candidates and strategists have debated whether to hit inflation head on or to heed warnings that any shift toward an economic message would be ending the campaign on the strongest possible Republican ground. Since midsummer, when the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade, Democrats had hoped that preserving the 50-year-old constitutional right to an abortion and castigating Republican extremism could get them past the worst inflation in 40 years.That is looking increasingly like wishful thinking.On Monday, Democrats unveiled new messages that appeared to switch tacks, incorporating achievements of the past two years with expressions of sympathy on the economy and dire warnings for what Republicans might bring.Former Representative Steve Israel, who headed the House Democrats’ campaign arm in a strong cycle of 2012 and weak one in 2014, said the dispute over how to address voters’ economic distress was essentially being resolved in favor of trying to accomplish a political feat that he said would be the trickiest he has ever seen: Democrats would continue to hammer Republicans on abortion and their ties to former President Donald J. Trump to boost turnout among their core supporters, while simultaneously trying to win over undecided voters whose biggest concerns are inflation and crime.“There was a narrative at one point that this was a Roe v. Wade election,” said Representative Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, whose district, newly drawn to lean Republican, has made him one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents in the House. “I never thought it was going to be that simple.”On Friday, four veteran Democratic strategists published a piece in The American Prospect, the liberal magazine, that pleaded with Democrats to find a new message that acknowledges the pain of rising prices and answers voter concerns. To do that, they argued, candidates need to convey their legislative successes while setting up culprits other than themselves: Republicans who voted against popular measures like capping the price of insulin, and wealthy corporations that are jacking up prices and reaping more profits.Voters “want to know you understand what is going on in their lives,” the strategists wrote. “They want to know you are helping with their No. 1 problem and have a plan. They want to know the difference between Democrats and Republicans when they cast their votes.” The piece was written by Patrick Gaspard, president of the liberal Center for American Politics; Stanley Greenberg and Celinda Lake, veteran Democratic pollsters; and Mike Lux, a senior White House aide under President Bill Clinton.Ms. Lake, in an interview on Saturday, said Democratic strategists were “extremely concerned” that the wave of support the party saw over the summer was evaporating at the worst possible time. But she insisted there was time, with barely two weeks to go, to correct course.“A lot of candidates aren’t really clear about what the economic message is,” she said. “What we need to do is set up a more vivid contrast. People are getting more pessimistic about the economy.”To some Democrats, liberals and moderates alike, the reluctance of frontline candidates to talk up the party’s achievements has been maddening. Faiz Shakir, a longtime political adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive mainstay from Vermont, called a campaign built around abortion and former President Donald J. Trump “political malpractice.”Representative Nancy Pelosi during a news conference on the Inflation Reduction Act.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesIn two years, the party has passed a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, a generous tax credit for parents that brought child poverty to historic lows, legislation that made good on the popular, longstanding promise to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, and the biggest investment in clean energy in history — all achievements that could be framed as helping people cope with rising prices.An ad launched on Monday by a Democratic super PAC in the Minnesota district of moderate Representative Angie Craig makes that point. And Mr. Sanders pressed it on Sunday, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying Republicans have said little about what they would do, and what they have said — like forcing cuts to entitlements like Medicare and Social Security and extending Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — would be unpopular, make the problem worse, or both.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.A G.O.P. Advantage: Republicans appear to be gaining an edge in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, explains why the mood of the electorate has shifted.Ohio Senate Race: Tim Ryan, the Democrat who is challenging J.D. Vance, has turned the state into perhaps the country’s unlikeliest Senate battleground.Losing Faith in the System: As democracy erodes in Wisconsin, many of the state’s citizens feel powerless. But Republicans and Democrats see different culprits and different risks.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.“They want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at a time when millions of seniors are struggling to pay their bills,” Mr. Sanders said. “Do you think that’s what we should be doing? Democrats should take that to them.”But for the party in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, finding an effective message will be difficult, if not impossible. Republicans are evincing no fears of any Democratic shifts.“Democrats are out of time and out of solutions when it comes to fixing the rising costs they handed voters — now they’re going to pay the price at the ballot box,” said Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans.In the 2010 midterms, then-President Barack Obama barnstormed the country with a message that Republicans had driven the country’s economy into a ditch, and Democrats had pulled the car out. Then voters delivered what Mr. Obama himself called a “shellacking,” giving Republicans 63 total seats in the House and seven in the Senate, the largest shift since 1948.David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief political adviser, recalled telling the president-elect in 2008 that Democrats would face a reckoning in 2010 after two successive wave elections and the most dire financial crisis since the Depression. After Democrats passed a huge economic stimulus bill, other economic measures like legislation to help consumers trade in their “clunker” cars for more efficient models, and a landmark regulation of Wall Street, they could say they had made progress on the economy.“But people didn’t feel the car was out of the ditch yet,” Mr. Axelrod said, “and they were looking to the guy who was in there now.”The lesson of 2010 was not to avoid the subject but to acknowledge the pain and set up a choice. Two years later, with the economic shock of the financial crisis still lingering, the Obama campaign made fighting for the middle class the central message of a re-election bid against a Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, who was painted as the essence of the out-of-touch plutocrat.“It was never going to work to not talk about the economy,” Mr. Axelrod said. “That’s sort of like, ‘How was the play otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln?’”If voter anguish in 2022 is similar to 2010, the economic issues are different. Unemployment is at record lows in several states. The issue is more a shortage of workers than a shortage of jobs. Wage growth is robust. But inflation — which lends itself to an attendant fear of the future and pervasive sense of falling behind — is a particularly destabilizing force. It helped topple Liz Truss, the British prime minister, after only six chaotic weeks, and helped usher in an Italian government that descends from Mussolini’s fascism.Ms. Truss’s support collapsed after her conservative economic plan of tax cuts skewed to the rich sent financial markets in a tailspin. The British pound also sank to near record lows against the dollar, and economists warned of still worse inflation. Representative Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from California, said Democrats needed to harness that experience to point out that Republican leaders have a similar economic plan if they take control of Congress.“The Republicans are running on an explicit promise of extending Trump’s tax cuts,” he said. “We have to frame the election as a choice on the economy.”Mr. Khanna was campaigning for Democrats in South Carolina on Saturday. He said the party’s candidates needed to answer the inflation question by hammering home the argument that Republican fiscal policies translate to tax cuts for the wealthy and sending jobs overseas.“We’ve got to do a better job having a clear economic message,” Mr. Khanna said. “I don’t think we can say, ‘Woe is me. Gas prices are going up.’”But Republicans, out of power, with no responsibility for much of the legislation of the Biden era, have a ready answer, which they have used with success: All those “achievements” created the inflation problem, by stoking consumer demand at a time when supply could not keep up. The U.S. economy was not prepared for a rapid shift from fossil fuels, their argument goes, so Democratic efforts to address climate change sent gas prices soaring. And Democratic promises for still more government assistance will only keep prices rising.Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican in an unexpectedly competitive re-election fight, has taken to quoting the Nobel Prize-winning conservative economist Milton Friedman on inflation repeatedly: “Consumers don’t produce it. Producers don’t produce it. The trade unions don’t produce it. Foreign sheikhs don’t produce it. Oil imports don’t produce it. What produces it is too much government spending.”That may be oversimplified in today’s strange economy. Some price increases were triggered by supply chains snarled by the pandemic that created pent-up consumer demand after periods of confinement and shuttered factories and shipping industries that were slow to return to peak production. Tight energy supplies and ensuing gas price increases are far more attributable to the war in Ukraine than any domestic energy legislation. Inflation is a global problem that is worse in Europe and Britain than in the United States.A gas station in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.Aimee Dilger/ReutersBut most economists do believe some Democratic bills — especially the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — exacerbated the problem. The $1,400 checks that most American households received in 2021 have been forgotten. Their contribution to an overheated consumer economy has not.The latest Republican attack ads hit inflation and economic uncertainty hard and lay the blame on Democratic malfeasance, not the complexities of international commerce and conflict.“Democrats spent two years completely ignoring the country’s single-most pressing issue because they have nothing to say. They know their policies made inflation worse and they own this economic tsunami,” said Dan Conston, head of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a powerful super PAC aligned with the House Republican leadership.Mr. Axelrod said the Democrats’ secret weapon could be their opponents. For all the campaign ads harping on economic issues, many Republican candidates are using extreme language to spotlight more contentious issues: national abortion legislation, denying the validity of the 2020 election, and impeaching President Biden. Given some of the loudest voices in the G.O.P. seem uninterested in economic struggles, voters may not see the opposition party as a credible alternative.But, Ms. Lake said, the Democrats need to make that case.“There’s time; there’s money,” she said. “We’re going to be spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising in the next two weeks, and there’s vulnerability on the Republican side, but only if we articulate the contrast.” More

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      Biden Expands Effort to Lower Gas Prices and Secure Energy Independence

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      Depleting emergency oil reserves spurs criticism that the White House is trying to lower gas prices with midterm election politics in mind.The president rejected the notion that the move to release more oil was politically motivated by the upcoming midterm elections.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWASHINGTON — President Biden expanded his efforts on Wednesday to blunt the pain of rising gas prices and reduce America’s exposure to global energy markets, which have become more volatile because of provocative actions by Russia and Saudi Arabia.The administration announced $2.8 billion in grants to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and the electrical grid, one day after officials said that the United States would release millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and that Mr. Biden would consider additional withdrawals this winter.The moves highlight how energy security is now at the center of the Biden administration’s economic agenda, which has been derailed by soaring inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine. Those concerns come at a perilous political moment, with midterm elections that will determine dynamics in Washington less than three weeks away.Mr. Biden’s decision to order the release of 15 million additional barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is designed to address the immediate worry of rising gas prices, which was exacerbated further by Saudi Arabia’s recent decision, in concert with Russia, to cut oil production. In total, 180 million barrels of oil have been released since Mr. Biden authorized the use of the reserve in March.The Biden administration is prepared to dip further into its emergency supplies this winter, despite concerns that depleting the reserve could put the nation’s energy security at risk.“We’re calling it a ready and release plan,” Mr. Biden said on Wednesday. “This allows us to move quickly to prevent oil price spikes and respond to international events.”Mr. Biden has described the releases as a way to blunt the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine while domestic energy producers ramp up production. There are about 400 million barrels remaining in the stockpile, which has the capacity to hold about 700 million barrels.The Biden PresidencyWith midterm elections approaching, here’s where President Biden stands.Storyteller in Chief: President Biden has been unable to break himself of the habit of spinning embellished narratives to weave a political identity.Diplomatic Limits: OPEC’s decision to curb oil production has exposed the failure of President Biden’s fist-bump diplomacy with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.Defending Democracy: Mr. Biden’s drive to buttress democracy at home and abroad has taken on more urgency by the persistent power of China, Russia and former President Donald J. Trump.Questions About 2024: Mr. Biden has said he plans to run for a second term, but at 79, his age has become an uncomfortable issue.In remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden rebutted the notion that his administration had placed curbs on domestic oil production. Instead, he called on companies to expand production and said even if demand for oil slows in future years, they would be able to sell it back to the federal government to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when oil prices decline to around $70 a barrel.The president also accused oil companies of profiteering and warned them not to gouge prices as Americans are grappling with inflation.“When the cost of oil comes down, we should see the price of the gas station at the pump come down as well,” he said. “My message to the American energy companies is, you should not be using your profits to buy back stock or for dividends. Not now. Not while a war is raging.”Separately on Wednesday, the White House announced that the Energy Department is awarding $2.8 billion of grants that were created as part of the infrastructure legislation passed earlier this year..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The money will go to 20 companies in 12 states and will be used for projects related to the production of lithium, graphite and nickel that is used in batteries that power electric vehicles. One grant recipient, Talon Nickel, said it would use the $114 million it had been awarded to help set up a processing facility for battery materials in Mercer County, North Dakota.The North Dakota facility will process ore that the company plans to mine in Minnesota, one link in the first fully domestic supply chain for battery-grade nickel that Talon is building out in partnership with Tesla.While the Biden administration has stressed the importance of building up some domestic manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries, which is now heavily reliant on China, administration officials have also acknowledged the pollution risks in permitting new mines and processing facilities in the United States.Talon’s plan to build an underground mine to extract nickel from a water-rich area of northern Minnesota drew concerns from some in the area, including Ojibwe tribes who gather wild rice nearby.Todd Malan, the company’s chief external affairs officer, said the decision to locate the processing facility at an industrial site in North Dakota, instead of near the company’s proposed mine in Minnesota, was a “direct response” to those concerns. He said the company would create a “cemented containment facility” that would neutralize and contain waste from ore processing.“We hope that this is seen as a step toward addressing their concerns while still producing the necessary materials for the U.S. electric vehicle battery supply chain,” he said.Gene Berdichevsky, the co-founder and chief executive of Sila, a maker of battery materials, said the $100 million grant the company received would allow it to expand the size of a factory in Moses Lake, Wash.Sila’s technology substitutes silicon for graphite in electric vehicle batteries, making them smaller and lighter and reducing the need for materials imported from China. Mercedes-Benz, Sila’s first announced customer, plans to deploy the technology in sport utility vehicles that will be available for sale around the middle of the decade.During a manufacturing event at the White House with recipients of the grants, Mr. Biden described the race to make batteries in the United States as part of a broader economic contest with China. He noted that 75 percent of battery manufacturing is done in China and that the country controls nearly half of the global production of the contents of batteries.“China’s battery technology is not more innovative than anyone else,” Mr. Biden said. “By undercutting U.S. manufacturers with their unfair subsidies and trade practices, China seized a significant portion of the market. Today we’re stepping up, really, to take it back.”The grant funds, which could take years to yield results, are part of the Biden administration’s longer-term strategy to transition away from cars with combustion engines and reach a goal of making half of all new vehicles sold electric by 2030.But the use of the strategic oil reserves has fueled criticism that Mr. Biden is putting the nation’s near-term energy security at risk for political purposes.“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was built for a national energy crisis — not for a Democrat election crisis,” said Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming. “Joe Biden is draining our emergency oil supply to a 40-year low.”Mr. Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the president’s “dismal approval rating is not a justifiable reason to continue to raid our nation’s oil reserves.”On Wednesday, Mr. Biden denied that he was releasing more oil with the midterm elections in mind.“It’s not politically motivated at all,” Mr. Biden said, explaining that he has been working for months to lower gas prices. “It’s motivated to make sure that I continue to push on what I’ve been pushing.”Jack Ewing More

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      U.S. to Release Millions More Barrels of Oil to Contain Gas Prices

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      The Department of Energy will release 15 million more barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and plans additional releases this winter.WASHINGTON — The United States plans to release millions of additional barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in December and to make additional releases over the winter, White House officials said on Tuesday evening.The releases from the strategic reserve this year have been a dramatic step by the United States to contain its gasoline prices and stabilize energy prices around the world. The latest move comes three weeks ahead of the midterm elections and amid growing concern that inflation could worsen as winter approaches and the conflict in Ukraine drags on.Officials said the United States would release an additional 15 million barrels of oil from the reserve in December, exhausting the 180 million barrels that President Biden authorized to be sold earlier this year. The sales were intended to serve as a “wartime bridge” as domestic production in the United States ramps up, but White House officials said on Tuesday that Mr. Biden is prepared to authorize additional oil sales later this winter if needed.The reserve can hold about 700 million barrels of oil and has about 400 million remaining. White House officials say they intend to replenish the reserve when world oil prices decline to a range of $67 to $72 a barrel; they are now hovering around $90.Mr. Biden is expected to announce the plan on Wednesday. Officials said he would also call on refining companies not to gouge prices and to pass lower energy costs resulting from the oil releases onto consumers.Gas prices in the United States eased over the summer as the United States sold oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and concerns about a global recession deepened. They have increased again in recent weeks after the Saudi-led OPEC Plus decided to scale back petroleum supplies on the market by up to two million barrels per day to bolster the price of oil.The move angered Mr. Biden, who said last week that “there will be consequences” for Saudi Arabia’s decision.The White House has faced criticism from Republicans for depleting the strategic reserve ahead of the midterm elections, even as Republicans have made the specter of rising gas prices a central campaign theme.“Draining our emergency supplies is a shortsighted and dangerous choice that imperils our energy security at a critical time of global uncertainty,” Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, said last week.The Biden administration has defended the decision, insisting that all Americans benefit from lower gas prices and that energy prices around the world are elevated because of Russia’s war in Ukraine.“President Biden has said for months how he is committed to doing everything that he can, in his power, to address Putin’s price hike,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday. “Should the president not do everything that he can to lower prices?” More