The military judge in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case on Monday reset the start of jury selection to Oct. 19, more than 26 years after the suicide bombing in a port in the Middle East killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded dozens of others.

Col. Matthew Fitzgerald, an Army judge, said that government agencies were unlikely to process classified evidence in time for what was to be a June 1 start date for the national security trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

A Saudi citizen, Abd-al Rahim al-Nashiri is accused of orchestrating the attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer off Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12, 2000 as an acolyte of Osama bin Laden. The death penalty case has been shadowed by the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture on the defendant.

Judges at the U.S. naval station in Cuba have set and then abandoned about 10 earlier trial start dates. Pretrial litigation has gone on so long, since Mr. Nashiri was charged in 2011, that three previous judges and all of the initial defense and prosecution lawyers retired from the case or left it for personal or professional reasons.

Mr. Nashiri was captured in Dubai in October 2002. First, he spent about 1,390 days in the custody of the C.I.A., which subjected him to waterboarding, forced nudity, extreme isolation, rectal and other forms of abuse, primarily in secret prisons in Afghanistan and Thailand, according to agency and Senate reports.

The Cole bombing, by two Al Qaeda recruits who blew themselves up on a small, explosives- laden skiff, was a precursor of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and Mr. Nashiri’s case is on track to become the first capital trial at Guantánamo Bay.

A judge in each case has ruled against the use of a defendant’s confessions because they were contaminated by their years in the C.I.A.’s brutal detention and interrogation program — out of reach of the courts, defense lawyers and International Red Cross.

The defendants were moved to Guantánamo in September 2006 and interrogated by federal agents to build cases against them without warnings against self-incrimination and the right to consult a lawyer.

The Cole trial is expected to last at least six months, and would start on Oct. 19 with the military shuttling 50 U.S. officers at a time there from a pool of 350 men and women to establish a jury of 12 with six alternate members. Guantánamo is so small, a 45-square-mile base with about 4,500 residents and limited guest quarters, that it would be logistically difficult to bring the entire pool down.

Last week, prosecutors in the Sept. 11 case asked a military judge to set deadlines for starting the four-man conspiracy trial in May 2027. Prosecutors had earlier proposed Jan. 11, 2027, but concluded it was not practical even before arguing for it to Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, their presiding judge.

Colonel Schrama said Monday that he would look at setting a trial schedule after he rules on some key pretrial evidentiary motions, probably over the summer, involving Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the plot, and two other defendants.

Both cases have dragged on so long in part because no court case in U.S. history has dealt with the volume of classified information involved in this case, which is guarding secret government activities and surveillance that started with the war against terrorism.

Some Navy shipmates who survived the Cole attack and the relatives of victims of both the Cole and Sept. 11 attacks have died waiting for the trials to begin. Family members have been traveling to the base since the arraignment in 2011 to watch pretrial proceedings.

President Trump revealed a new plan on Monday to bring down gas prices that have soared since he chose to start a war with Iran: He wants to suspend federal gas taxes.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Mr. Trump said in a phone call with a reporter from CBS News on Monday morning. “Yup, we’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in.” A short while later, he mused more about the plan while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office.

He did not mention that such a move would require congressional approval. Asked when or even if the administration planned to approach lawmakers on Capitol Hill about suspending the tax, a representative for the White House said simply: “We refer you to the president’s comments from earlier today.”

Even if Mr. Trump succeeded in pausing federal gas taxes, prices might come down only a smidgen: federal taxes are a little over 18 cents a gallon for gasoline and about 24 cents a gallon for diesel. Prices are up about 50 percent since the war began.

The president acknowledged in the Oval Office on Monday that the drop would be slight.

“It’s a small percentage,” he said, “but it’s, you know, it’s still money.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s foes mocked the idea as too little, too late. “Yes please do throw the peasants some more bread crumbs,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former representative, posted on X.

Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, said he approved of Mr. Trump’s proposal. “Families need help now,” Mr. Kelly wrote. “Let’s get it done.” (Mr. Kelly had first proposed this idea back in March.)

The administration floated a halt to the gas tax — which funds road construction and repairs across the country — on Sunday, when the energy secretary, Chris Wright, proposed it on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said that “all measures that can be taken to lower the price of at the pump and lower the prices for Americans, this administration is in support of.”

Last month, Mr. Wright admitted that gas prices may remain elevated for months, even as the president promises they’ll plummet any day now. So far, studies have shown that the higher gas prices have hit lower-income Americans the hardest.

“As soon as this is over with Iran,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, “you’re going to see gasoline and oil drop like a rock.”

And yet, how soon is soon? He used that same meeting to shred the Iranians’ latest counterproposal as a “piece of garbage,” and said that the cease-fire was on “life support.” He insisted that Iran was in the grips of a powerful faction of “lunatics” who wanted to fight on for as long as possible.

In 2022, President Biden proposed this same idea to bring gas prices down. It never happened. Congress balked. Republicans slammed the idea as gimmicky and bad policy.