Governor Ned Lamont just handed Connecticut a $12.7 million heating-assistance check and immediately blamed the price of oil on President Trump’s war in Iran.

That is the framing in the official press release and in most of the local write-ups that followed. The money comes from Connecticut’s own Federal Cuts Response Fund — state dollars the legislature set aside last year. It is not federal money Trump cut. It is not a “Trump fund.” It is Hartford writing a check and then pointing at Washington.

Heating oil in Connecticut is about $6 a gallon. That is real. Global oil markets are tight. That is also real. What is missing from the coverage is any discussion of Connecticut’s own energy policy: some of the highest electricity rates in the country, years of renewable mandates, and a retreat from natural-gas expansion that could have given more households a cheaper alternative to oil. Those choices were made in Hartford, not in Tehran.

Lamont’s own words in the announcement were direct: families are “paying the price for rising heating oil costs driven by President Trump’s war in Iran.” He said the same at the press conference. Local outlets carried the quote and the number without pressing on Connecticut’s energy policy. That is the malpractice. The $12.7 million is real. The oil price is real. The causal leap to “Trump’s war” as the sole explanation is political framing presented as fact.

Connecticut households that heat with oil already face some of the highest energy costs in the country. Adding a one-time state supplement does not change the underlying policy that keeps those costs high. Framing the entire problem as a foreign-policy decision by the White House lets the people who set Connecticut’s energy rules off the hook.

The numbers are straightforward. The story is not.