President Donald Trump's crusade to limit mail-in voting was swatted aside by a key swing state on Friday.

North Carolina became the first state this cycle to send out absentee ballots on schedule, a real-world defiance of the White House's push to choke off the practice before the midterms, The New York Times reported. Election officials in the state said the first wave went to more than 46,000 voters who'd already requested absentee ballots, with more batches to follow as requests keep coming in.

That timing "could complicate the Trump administration’s effort to impose new restrictions on voting by mail," per the Times — with the administration demanding states to turn voter data over to the Postal Service, adopt bar-coded envelopes so ballots can be scanned for verification or risk having their mail ballots "withheld entirely" if they refuse.

A federal judge, Indira Talwani, has put the rule on hold for now, but roughly two dozen Democratic-led states are suing the Postal Service in Massachusetts federal court to kill it for good, arguing only states and Congress — not the president — have constitutional authority over how elections are run.

The Times reported that 19 more states plan to mail ballots by Sept. 19, and several have told courts they simply can't retool their systems in time if judges ultimately let the rule stand.

"It is far too late in the election cycle to introduce such dramatic changes," North Carolina's deputy attorney general, Marc Brunton, wrote in one filing.

A Wisconsin official separately called compliance "virtually impossible," while Hawaii's election office said it couldn't realistically get replacement envelopes shipped in "from the continent" on such short notice.

Former President Barack Obama's chief strategist remains haunted by the thought that the entire Donald Trump era might have been avoided with a phone call.

David Axelrod, who had spearheaded both of Obama's successful presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, told New York Magazine's Ben Terris about a phone call he received in 2010 from Trump, then the star of "Celebrity Apprentice" and publicly teasing a presidential run, pitching a ballroom construction project at the White House.

“I build ballrooms,” Trump reportedly told Axelrod. “I build the greatest ballrooms in the world — come down to Florida and see for yourself. You have these state dinners, and you have them in these s----- little tents in the back. It’s not befitting. Let me build a modular ballroom for you. You can put it together, take it apart.”

Axelrod thought Trump's idea was preposterous, he told Terris.

“We were just coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and I’m pretty sure no one in America thinks our priority should be a ballroom for the White House,” Axelrod told Terris.

Axelrod passed Trump's message to the White House social secretary and assumed someone would follow up on the call – but it never happened.

“He was owed a call,” Axelrod said. “I have no excuse for that.”

However, Axelrod has occasionally wondered what might have been different about the last 15 years – from Trump's birther conspiracies to his ride down the golden escalator in June 2015 – if Obama's White House had returned his call about the ballroom.

“If we had let him build his modular ballroom, perhaps we wouldn’t have had to demolish the East Wing," Axelrod said, "and in that sense, I kind of regret not doing it.”

The 80-year-old president told Terris he didn't hold a grudge, but that it taught him something about the Obama administration.

“They’re not good businesspeople,” he said. “If somebody offers you a free ballroom, take it, right?”

Trump never forgot about building a ballroom, and he even campaigned on it at an Iowa rally in January 2016, telling supporters what he would bring to Washington.

"We’ll get the top people, top everything — we’ll have the best ballroom,” Trump said in Sioux City. “Because I notice they always put tents up on the lawn. No. 1, it’s not a good security thing. No. 2, the guy that owns the tents is making a fortune.”

He told Terris he wanted to build a ballroom during his first term, saying he was embarrassed to invite foreign leaders to the White House without one, but said the timing never felt right.

“In the first term, I was under siege,” he told Terris. “I didn’t feel it was the atmosphere ... [This] is a much more powerful time.”

A resurfaced online post from President Donald Trump came back to haunt him Friday after U.S. diesel prices hit an all-time high amid the deeply unpopular U.S. war against Iran.

For the first time in history, the average cost for a gallon of diesel reached $5.85 on Friday according to the American Automobile Association, breaking the previous record set in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump’s war against Iran and its disruption to oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz is widely seen as the leading cause of energy price hikes.

Amid the unprecedented spike in oil costs, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) flagged an online post published by Trump in 2012 to use his own words against him.

“Gas prices are at crazy levels--fire Obama!” Trump wrote in a social media post on X — then known as Twitter — on Oct. 22, 2012.

According to USA Today, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline on Oct. 22, 2012 was $3.68. As of Friday, it stood at $4.15, nearly $1 higher than where it stood a year earlier.

“Gas prices were $3.68 when Trump posted this,” Thanedar wrote in a recent social media post on X. “Today, they're $4.13 due to the evil war he started to enrich his sons through their $6.3 BILLION Pentagon contracts.”

The rising cost of energy is expected to impact Americans’ pocketbooks far beyond the pump, with higher diesel prices also meaning “higher transportation costs for a long list of everyday goods,” the Associated Press noted in a report published on Friday.

“More expensive fuel is increasing bills for businesses across sectors — some of which have already passed on costs to consumers in the form of added fees on online orders and packages in the mail,” the Associated Press’ report reads. “And shoppers may see more and more sticker shock trickle down to store shelves.”

Trump was warned “repeatedly” ahead of launching his war against Iran that doing so would likely cripple traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Wall Street Journal, but repeatedly dismissed said warnings, believing that Iran “would likely capitulate before closing the strait.”