I'm Steve Doocy. I'm Sandra Smith. I'm Jimmy Falla. And this is the Fox News Rundown. Wednesday, May 6th, 2026. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. Can oil and gas prices come back down as quickly as the president promises? Or will it take a bit of time given all the damage Iranian attacks have caused to Gulf state oil and gas facilities? It is a good thing that drill baby drill is the name of the game right now. Watch for any Permian Basin. Watch if any of those drillers say that they're going to start drilling more. I'm Dave Anthony. The Trump administration is touting efforts to save us money on prescription drugs. Drug companies are going to be able to profit from them, which is a fair thing to ask them to be able to do. What we can't have them do is charge different prices for Americans and overseas folks or price gouge. And I'm Jason Chaffetz. I've got the final word on the Fox News rundown. The average price of gasoline has soared in the last two months, with the national average near $4.50 a gallon. But President Trump continued this week to state that this is temporary and had been due to conflict in Iran. I see it going down very substantially when this is over, Chris, and I think very rapidly, too. His Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, echoed this on Fox News this week. We are cognizant that this short-term blip up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident on the other side of this, prices are going to come down very quickly. The conflict will end. The president insists the price is worth it. That's a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged. And while much of Iran's capabilities have been destroyed, they've used much of it to target oil and gas facilities in the Gulf and continue to target them with the weaponry they still have. Just this week, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Cain acknowledged. In addition to shipping, Iran has continued to deliberately attack its neighbors. Just yesterday, Iran attacked Oman once and the UAE three times, including an attack on Fujairah oil terminal, which was successfully defeated. Energy research company Riestat estimates damage caused to energy infrastructure across Gulf states will cost nearly $60 billion to repair. The International Energy Agency has said more than 80 oil and gas facilities have been damaged across the Gulf. So with all of that damage, once all is said and done, can prices come back down quickly or will it take some time? The hope is the U.S. is swimming in so much oil. And now we have so many new customers, companies, countries. I mean, we are exporting more than ever. Fox Business correspondent Lauren Simonetti. We are exporting more of our oil and our natural gas that we have at any point in time. But every time you do that, you draw down on your supply. I have spoken to many people who say gas will hit $5 a gallon nationally. I know many people are paying $5, if not $6 right now. But regular and leaded, $5 nationally on Memorial Day. So the end of this month. And at that point, it feels like something would have to give. What gives at that point? Either it's too high, people change their behavior, demand goes down. Since the U.S. has so much oil, prices would start to come down. Or there's a change in the Strait of Hormuz and with the conflict in Iran and things are over, more ships are moving. But things go up a lot faster than they come down. You know, I'm looking at the damage to all these facilities. I know the International Energy Agency is tracking this. We hear reports more than 80 oil and gas facilities in Gulf states have been damaged. We can mention them all, right? Raz Laughan, the LNG hub in Qatar, the Citro refinery in Bahrain. You've talked, I've seen you write about the Fujairah port and the UAE and the impacts there. Iran's facilities have been impacted. I'm reading some of this could take years to fix. What are the downstream effects if people can't output what they used to just because of damage? Good question. And it will take years. But remarkably, and we have seen this in past conflicts, that things are fixed a lot faster than people say they are going to be. The other thing that we're watching is Iran's oil wells. When are they going to shut in because they're running out of places to physically store the oil? And a lot of analysts say they have ways to do this. For 47 years, they have evaded sanctions and other restrictions placed on them. that even if they have to, and they might be doing that right now, capping some of their production, maybe in some of their older or less economic oil fields, they could be doing that now as I speak. It's not going to really crimp them the way we expect it to because this is an area that is so used to getting hit economically or kinetically that they have ways around. If you look at the straight-up form most specifically, that is a fifth of the world's oil, But they are figuring out ways to absorb a lot of that oil using different pipelines in the area or just rerouting ships entirely. It wasn't too long ago we spoke to a man who was deciding, how am I going to route my—they were chemical tankers, so not oil tankers. But how am I going to route them today? We're not going to go to the Middle East. Let's go to the Panama Canal. Do you know how much people are paying to go through the Panama Canal? Well, three to four million dollars because they want to secure a slot that they can get through. So they're now taking this journey that gets the oil to Asia from the U.S. Gulf Coast by going west. So we are seeing a workaround. Tell me, exports from the U.S., right? You're saying they've boomed, they've increased, but that's not translating into lower gas prices for us when we go fill up. So our companies might be doing really well. Our gas and our oil companies might be doing well, but that's not translating into our benefit. Will it ever? Or how does this work? Because the production is being exported because the world needs us and they're taking our oil. So if the oil is leaving the U.S. and going to other places, it's less that we have domestically. Are we going to run out of gas? No way. That's, you know, we'll just pay more for it. But then I think you see demand destruction start to happen if prices get too high. But it is a good thing that drill baby drill is the name of the game right now. Watch for any Permian Basin that's Texas and Oklahoma. Watch if any of those drillers say that they're going to start drilling more. They have not said that. And I speak to them every single day. I am searching. If anybody hears this, I am searching for an oil producer in the U.S. who says that we are actively drilling more because oil is at $100, if not above. And we feel this is worthwhile. The reason they not doing that is because they think this is temporary The amount of time it takes to get your permits even though it happening a lot faster now under the Trump administration it still takes months to get a permit and then get everything that you need in place on a site to actually drill for oil What these companies are doing is they're looking at their current production and they're saying, how can I get these barrels to market faster to take advantage of the price spike? But so far in all of my reporting in all of my contacts. I have not met with one driller who says they are drilling more because of the conflict for the past eight weeks, encouraging them that, OK, oil prices are going to stay high and we can continue to make money from this. They're not saying that. Tell us then, in light of the global picture, about the impact of the United Arab Emirates leaving OPEC. I understand that's a pretty big deal. Yeah. Well, they want to produce more and they have the ability to produce 5 million barrels a day. They're not doing that now, obviously because of the conflict, but they weren't doing that before either. And the reason is you're in this group, this cartel of nations, about a dozen, called the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, and you set quotas. So it's basically a way to control the price of oil by making sure not one member produces too much, which would bring the price down. So you kind of act in unison. you meet ever so often and you determine what you should do. The UAE is like, okay, enough with this. I mean, we're looking at the global economy. We're looking at all different ways to get energy. Yes, it's fossil fuels and oil, but there's all these other diversified and even green ways to do it. We want to pump more and we want to pump more while we can. And we have these pipelines that can carry, I mean, if you look at the port of Fajira, the pipeline that goes from their oil fields in the west east bypassing the Strait of Hormuz that pipeline has been activated big time it's now maxed out at about 1.8 million barrels per day they want to do more of that because they can so they just don't want to be governed by what the group says anymore do you think other countries will leave OPEC to follow suit kind of like what the UAE is doing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do. Yes. I think that the whole region's hold on the oil sector has been loosened. And I think the power structure when it comes to energy and oil is the United States of America, which is a complete 180 from where we were two years ago in the Biden administration. That's the first action he took on day one. Joe Biden was canceling the Keystone XL pipeline. Now we are getting pipelines up everywhere we can as fast as we can, including out west to California, which is a desert when it comes to oil and Vegas and all these surrounding states that pay so much. We are exporting 60 percent of our natural gas to Europe. We are keeping the lights on in Europe. And that in February, that 60 percent went up to I think it a 72 percent. I mean, as fast as we can produce the natural gas, we're sending it over over to Europe. So now we need the infrastructure in place and the pipelines in place to send more of it. We're happy to do that. Part of the Keystone XL pipeline, new company now, but part of what's already been laid is being used for a new pipeline. So this is all about this effort to make the U.S. suddenly, because it wasn't like this in the prior administration, the epicenter of energy for the world. Before I let you go, Lauren, because you track this, I see you writing about it. This effort to find alternative routes and get oil, you know, moving without the Strait of Hormuz, how big of a focus is that on these Gulf nations? I mean, how much of an effort is being put into figuring this out? Huge. It's just very difficult to be done. This is what Kepler is saying. Among the four largest economies dependent on Middle Eastern crude via the Strait of Hormuz, India and China have successfully secured approximately 90 percent of their 2025 import averages in the month of April. So war is still going on. They're still OK. They have 90 percent of the oil that they need. It's a different story in South Korea and Japan. They're about 60%. So no one is getting everything that they got before this all started, but they're using these bypasses and these alternative ways to get oil and energy out of the Middle East, not using the Strait of Hormuz to ensure that they do get something. And in some cases, it's almost everything that they used to get, but not at all. And that's not going to continue for a long time, especially if the war does continue and you have Iran firing at key refineries and facilities and oil ports or even pipelines that are the bypass pipelines, then you have another issue. So none of this is good. But so far, the importance of the straight of Hormuz will never be as important as it was on February 27th when all of this started. It will never be as crucial to the world economy. Those nations have lost the power center for the energy markets. Fox Business Correspondent Lauren Simonetti, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, anytime. Precise, personal, powerful. Is America's weather team in the palm of your hands? Get Fox weather updates throughout your busy day, every day. Subscribe and listen now at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jason Chaffetz with your Fox News commentary coming up. It's part of the Make America Healthy Again agenda, bringing back the Presidential Fitness Test Award for students, phased out during the Obama administration. My administration's working very hard to defend America's cherished athletic traditions and pass our values of excellence and competitiveness to the next generation. In the past, it measured students' fitness using timed one-mile runs and sit-ups and push-ups. Standing next to President Trump in the Oval Office, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the test will be... Challenging Americans could be with each other in a friendly, congenial way. And the secretary says we need to focus on fitness. We've gone from 5% of our kids being obese to 20%. 70% of adults are obese or overweight. This says the Trump administration also released an economic analysis of the president's most favored nation drug pricing policy involving agreements with 17 pharmaceutical companies. Though Democrats remain critical suggesting that drug companies are still raising prices on hundreds of medications Now this analysis estimates that the policy will generate billion in savings over a decade I believe President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, if they have a superpower, one among many, is that they focus on the issues that matter to Americans the most. Dr. Tom Keene is President Trump's National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. And obviously, the high cost of health care is at the top of that list. And so the president and Secretary Kennedy are targeting the high cost of health care through a number of initiatives, one of which you just described, the most favored nation, drug pricing. As you know, folks overseas, folks in European nations, typically paid substantially less for their drugs than we paid in the United States. And the Trump administration and folks, Secretary Kennedy and folks at CMS, decided that we had the ability to negotiate with drug companies to bring our drug prices down in keeping with those of other countries. They've been doing this aggressively over the last 14 months of the Trump administration, and so far the results have been spectacular. As you alluded to, more than $500 billion in savings over 10 years and more than $64 billion in savings to Medicaid programs simply by negotiating for the United States to pay the same prices that our overseas colleagues pay. Are these popular drugs that a lot of Americans are taking? What are we talking about here? We're talking about brand name drugs that are widely used by Americans. This initiative, these initiatives and efforts to lower drug pricing began in the last Trump administration. If you recall, at that time, people who were dependent on insulin for their diabetes were paying close to $300 a month in order to access insulin. My colleagues over here at CMS and one of my colleagues who works with me now were able to negotiate with insurance companies and with drug companies to lower the price of insulin to $35 a month. This initiative has continued in this administration among drugs not only like insulin that are commonly used, but fertility drugs, drugs for weight loss, and drugs across the entire spectrum of disease, including cancer drugs and drugs for inflammatory conditions that people suffer from, like rheumatoid arthritis. You reference weight loss drugs. A lot of people are interested in these are GLP-1s, right? These are the GLP-1s. Yeah, and they're certainly getting a lot of attention, but their prices can vary widely. And another issue is getting them covered by insurance. So what is the difference with the cost people pay when they have insurance covered or when insurance doesn't cover it? Well, that's a great question. As you know, another Trump administration initiative to lower drug prices was the release of TrumpRx, a website in which people can access approximately 60 drugs at some of the lowest prices that are available in the market. The GOP drugs, if you buy them at the pharmacy counter for cash, typically cost about $1,300. The drug companies will actually deal directly with consumers who don't have insurance and lower the cost of these drugs to as low as under $300. and these prices are accessible through the TrumpRx website due to the work that the Trump administration has done. So even if you don't have insurance, you will pay only a fraction of the cost that you would normally be charged at the pharmacy counter. Okay, and is there a chance that you would pay less TrumpRx than if you had your insurance covered or not? It all depends on the insurance plan. One of the things that we're doing in my office, the National Coordinator's Office, is trying to make these drug prices transparent to both the physician and the patient at the time of prescribing. Up until recently, when you went to the doctor's office and the doctor chose a therapy for you, neither the doctor nor you had any sense whether this therapy was covered by insurance or how much it would cost even if it was covered by insurance. Last summer, under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy's direction, we adopted regulation that requires the makers of electronic health records to actually display not only the prices of a pharmaceutical that a doctor chooses for a patient, but also the prices of therapeutically equivalent alternatives, so that the doctor, in conjunction with the patient, can choose the most cost-effective covered therapy for a patient. Sometimes the cost under insurance is the cheapest cost. Other times, believe it or not, the cash pay price that you can get without insurance can actually be cheaper. What we've done in this administration is make sure that all of these prices, The cash pay price, the insurance price is available to the prescriber and the patient at the time of prescribing so that you can optimize your therapy not only for therapeutic benefit but also for affordability. Is this for all doctors, all patients, for all medicine that when you go and you get a prescription you have to see this? The coverage is extensive. Any doctor that uses an electronic health record will have to adopt this functionality, I believe, by 2028. But at this point, we've found that this functionality has been adopted by roughly 90% of the market. The important thing that patients can do is ask their doctors to access this functionality and use it. And the important thing that doctors can do is be aware that this functionality exists and leverage it for the benefit of the patients. The information about the insurance costs are provided by the insurance companies. And it's pretty extensive and up-to-date because, believe it or not, the insurance companies want you also to choose the lowest cost, therapeutically effective alternative for you. So they're happy to provide this information. We in this administration, at Secretary Kennedy and President Trump's direction, are also getting the cash pay prices on there. and we're looking to get alternative vendors of information like Mark Cuban, Cost Plus Drugs, like GoodRx, like TrumpRx, all at the point of care so that both the patient and the doctor have access to this information. The important thing for your listeners to do is to ask their doctors to utilize this functionality when they go to the doctor's office. Now, certainly as this most favored nation status with the drug companies continues to play out, there have been critics. Senate Democrats put out a report last month. You probably saw this. They say that companies that signed drug pricing deals have raised the cost of hundreds of medications and launched new ones with an average price of $353,000 and that they made a lot more profit in 2025 than the year before. So when you hear that criticism, what do you say in response? Well, I think the criticism really falls flat. The reality is drugs are, in fact, a miracle of modern health care. We are able to treat conditions that just a few years ago were untreatable. When I was in medical school, medical students and doctors had to worry about getting a needle stick that would expose them to hepatitis C. If you got hepatitis C, it was a chronic disease for which there was no treatment, which could eventually lead to liver failure and liver cancer. Then in 2013, the drug companies came out with a cure for hepatitis C that was widely deployed. There's always going to be evolution in the drug product market New products are going to come on and there is an expectation that as these new products come on the market drug companies are going to be able to profit from them which is a fair thing to ask them to be able to do What we can have them do is charge different prices for Americans and overseas folks or price gouge And what the administration is doing, it's not addressing the issue of stopping innovation. It's addressing the issue of price gouging and differential pricing. This is something in which everybody can win. Not only are the patients provided drugs, but the number of patients who can actually access the therapy goes up. So the overall profitability of the company may actually go up as more and more patients are able to access therapeutic and appropriate drugs for their conditions. There are some drugs that are extremely expensive. In that Senate report, they brought out Keytruda, which is for cancer, and I guess it's called Kesimpta, a multiple sclerosis drug. And some of these drugs can cost $100,000 to $200,000 a year. How do we deal with that? I know you talk about the drug companies needing to get rewarded and get their profit from expensive research. But when you have prices like that or even some of the drugs that deal with some of the more rare diseases that are out there, that's very difficult for people to afford. Yes. Well, the MFN initiative is helping with this, as is the real-time prescription benefit functionality that I described. But I have to tell you, drug pricing is often done by value. So if you take a look, for example, at the hepatitis B example, I believe when the therapy was initially released, the cost of therapy was about $90,000. And if you see that on a store shelf, you would be absolutely shocked by it. But the actual cost of suffering from hepatitis C, having to deal with all the complications of it, having to deal with the complications of liver failure and eventual liver cancer are much, much higher. So in point of fact, pharmacotherapy can be a very effective way to lower overall drug costs. And I believe the drug companies try to price for value. Now, the best way to bring down prices is with competition. And by allowing there to be innovation and by not stifling the drug companies' work, we allow other drug companies to come up with therapeutic alternatives, which overall drives down prices. There are newer drugs and there aren't generic versions yet or maybe new alternatives. What do you do about that? I think typically doctors will choose the generic alternative if it's therapeutically equivalent, and you can inquire about that. The beauty of the real-time prescription benefit functionality that President Trump and Secretary Kennedy asked us to implement is that it shows not only the cost of the brand name drugs, but also the cost of the generic drugs, so that you can see both at the time of prescribing. Ultimately, are Americans going to be paying less for their prescription drugs over the next several years? Ultimately, yes. And at the same time, we will not be strangling the innovation that marks, that is the hallmark of American medicine and that allows new conditions to be treated so effectively. I'm old enough to remember when HIV was a fatal disease. Now HIV is a chronic disease managed with medications. This has been revolutionary, and we intend to allow the medical system to continue to produce these innovations and this revolution in health. Dr. Tom Keene is President Trump's National Coordinator for Health Information technology. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. 2026 marks 250 years of America and throughout the year. Bill Hammer takes listeners on a journey through the 250 most impactful moments in American history. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcasts.com. Rate and review the Fox News rundown on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It's time for your Fox News commentary. Jason Chaffetz. What's on your mind? A bumper crop of ethics allegations in the current 119th Congress is contributing to record low approval numbers for Congress this cycle. Already, three members of Congress have resigned this term, some waiting months after credible allegations surfaced. More need to go. Anytime you get 535 people together, somebody is going to be doing something stupid somewhere. But the public deserves faster, bolder action when their representatives behave badly. Delayed action undermines public trust. Though every American is owed due process, with elected officials in Congress, it must happen faster. The public should not have to wait out a scandal-plagued lame duck term. Congress must act with greater urgency when trust is broken. Voters deserve swift special elections in which they can directly choose a replacement. Delayed action only fuels the perception that government is rigged and unresponsive. Approval ratings for Congress are in the basement, with Gallup's April polling finding that just 10% approve while 86% disapprove. This is a direct threat to congressional legitimacy. Accountability must be real, not performative. I appreciate the work of the bipartisan House Ethics Committee, which has had its hands full. With an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, the committee is less driven by partisanship than other committees. However, because the balance of power is so tight, part of what's making these forced resignations possible is the even number of violators from each party. The process is not entirely driven by justice. It's still about political power. Elected officials hold power in trust, not as a personal right. The Constitution explicitly grants each chamber authority to discipline its members, including expulsion. There is no requirement for glacial timelines. Certainly, representatives are innocent until proven guilty. But public office is no courtroom. Voters still have a right to timely, functional representation. Prolonged service does not so much protect the innocent as shield the politically connected. The American people fund this government and grant its power. We should not have to beg for basic integrity, especially from those who have sworn an oath to uphold it. Congress must choose. Cling to slow motion self-protection or deliver the swift, credible accountability voters have every right to demand. The health of our republic depends on making the right choice. I'm Jason Chaffetz, Fox News contributor and host of the Jason in the House podcast. You've been listening to the Fox News Rundown. And now, stay up to date by subscribing to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. Listen ad-free on Fox News Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts. And Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on Amazon Music. And for up-to-the-minute news, go to foxnews.com.
