Good morning, it's Tuesday, August 18. The sixty-day window for a U.S.-Iran peace deal closed Monday with no agreement, no talks underway, and a president threatening to bomb an American ally.

Also in today's issue: Navy destroyer adrift for days, Vaccine exemptions break records, Trump scales back Korea drills, DOJ plans 1,000 poll monitors.

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The clock ran out Monday on the only thing that looked like a path toward ending the Iran war, and nobody in the administration seems to have a backup.

If you filled up your car this week, you already felt it. The national average for a gallon of gas sits around $4.01 — up more than a dollar from $2.96 the day before the conflict started in late February. For a two-car household, that's roughly $80 to $100 extra every month. And here's the thing: with no deal in place and the strait nearly shut, those prices are more likely to climb than to fall.

The sixty-day memorandum of understanding — a framework President Trump signed in Paris in June — was supposed to give both sides time to negotiate a lasting peace and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which roughly 20% of the world's oil normally flows. That window closed Monday. No deal was reached. No extension was offered. And no active talks are underway.

Now look at what's actually happening on the water. According to maritime tracking firm Kpler, just three ships passed through the strait on Sunday. Before the war started on February 28, that number was closer to a hundred per day. Brent crude — the global oil benchmark — broke above $90 a barrel this week. The U.S. Energy Information Administration now forecasts gas prices averaging $3.78 a gallon through the fall, though that estimate was made before the deadline collapsed.

Instead of announcing a new push for talks, Trump told Fox News that the U.S. would "bomb the shit out of" Oman — a country that has been a U.S. military partner for decades, hosts American forces at its port facilities, and holds a free trade agreement with the United States — if it interferes with the strait. He said he was "not in a hurry" to reach a deal. He refused to extend the memorandum.

Here's where it gets more concerning. Oman isn't the adversary. It's the mediator. Oman has been working quietly to broker a shipping arrangement between Iran and the international community. Threatening to bomb the country doing the diplomacy does not signal strength. It signals that no one is steering.

Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia who has led previous efforts to limit the president's war powers, announced Monday he would introduce a War Powers Resolution barring military action against Oman when the Senate returns from recess. But Congress won't be back in Washington until mid-September. That's a full month with no congressional check on a president who has now publicly threatened a partner nation.

The Congressional Research Service noted in an August report that periodic attacks and strikes have "severely disrupted" Hormuz traffic for most of the past five months. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve — America's emergency oil stockpile — has dropped to roughly 305 million barrels, a multi-decade low, after months of drawdowns meant to soften gas prices. That cushion is getting thin.

What to watch going forward: if Iran and Oman finalize their own shipping deal without U.S. involvement, Washington could find itself shut out of the very arrangement it needs. If oil prices keep climbing and the reserve keeps shrinking, the pressure on American families will build heading into the fall — right as voters start paying attention to the midterms. And if no one in the White House outlines a plan in the coming weeks, the question is no longer whether the policy is working. It's whether there is a policy at all.

A Navy destroyer drifted four days without power in the South China Sea last month after a generator failure knocked out propulsion, toilets, drinkable water, and air conditioning. The USS Benfold, part of the strike group escorting the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, had to be towed to Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs, according to USNI News. The timing is what matters. The George Washington's strike group is now heading to the Middle East to relieve the overextended USS Abraham Lincoln — leaving the western Pacific without a U.S. carrier presence as China increases military activity in the region. The Navy is stretched across two theaters, and one of its warships just spent four days unable to move under its own power. Readiness isn't a talking point. It's a math problem.

Kindergarten vaccine exemptions hit a record 4.2% in the 2025–2026 school year, up from 3.6% the year before, according to CDC data released Monday. About 280,000 kindergartners entered school without documented MMR vaccination — the shot that prevents measles, mumps, and rubella. Coverage fell to 92.4%, below the 95% threshold public health officials say is needed to prevent outbreaks. Exemptions rose in 41 states. The U.S. has already logged 2,566 measles cases in 2026 — a 35-year high — with 93% of patients unvaccinated. This is the first school-year data since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became Health and Human Services Secretary, and the numbers suggest his tenure is making the problem worse, not better.

Trump ordered the Pentagon to "substantially reduce" joint military exercises with South Korea on Sunday, hours before the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield drills were set to begin. He cited his "very good relationship" with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, called the exercises "costly" and "totally inappropriate," and said South Korea refused to help with the Iran war. The drills started Monday as planned, but the Pentagon offered no public explanation of what would be cut, according to NPR. The timing compounds the problem: the USS George Washington carrier strike group is being pulled from the Pacific for the Middle East, and North Korea recently resumed ballistic missile testing. Two theaters, one shrinking force.

The Justice Department plans to send roughly 1,000 poll monitors to November's midterm elections, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told Bloomberg's Balance of Power on Monday. She called it "probably a historic number for a Republican administration." During Michigan's primary earlier this month, DOJ sent monitors to four Democratic-leaning cities — Detroit, Hamtramck, Lansing, and East Lansing — home to large Black, Arab-American, and college-student populations. The department has not released its target list for November. As Democracy Docket reported, DOJ has lost all 23 federal court cases in its push to obtain unredacted state voter rolls. When the stated purpose is election security but the pattern points toward Democratic strongholds, the question answers itself.

Ships that passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, per Kpler tracking data. Before the Iran war began in February, roughly 100 ships per day made the crossing. The strait carries about one-fifth of the world's daily oil supply.

P.S. Should Trump have extended the Iran deadline? Hit Reply — one word is enough.