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WASHINGTON (AP) — White House economists estimate that President Donald Trump’sdeals with pharmaceutical companiesto drop some of their U.S. prescription drug prices to what they charge in other countries could save $529 billion over the next 10 years.

The analysis obtained by The Associated Press includes the first economy-wide projections behind a policy at the core of Trump’s pitch to voters going intoNovember’s midterm electionsfor control of the House and Senate. Democratic lawmakers have been doubtful about the savings claimed by Trump and these new numbers are likely to trigger additional questions about the data.

Cost-of-living issues are at the forefront of voters’ concernsandhigher energy prices tied to the Iran warhave deepened the public’s anxiety. Trump has tried in part to address affordability concerns by focusing on his efforts to cut deals with companies so that the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. would no longer be dramatically higher than in other affluent nations.

“Now you have the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a Friday rally before a crowd of seniors in Florida. “And that alone should win us the midterms.”

The analysis was done by administration officials for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. They also estimated that federal and state governments could save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid during the next decade because of what Trump calls his “most favored nation” policy on drug prices.

Few of the details of the deals struck by the Trump administration and17 leading pharmaceutical companieshave been made public, making it hard to independently verify the projected savings. The White House analysis sought to estimate the prospective savings as more medications come onto the market and fall under Trump’s framework — with one model in the report tallying the possible savings at $733 billion over a decade.

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Trump and his Department of Health and Human Services have touted his drug-pricing deals as transformative and urged Congress to codify their principles into law. Democratic lawmakers have challenged the administration’s claims of savings. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and 17 Senate Democrats in April proposed a measure requiring the administration to disclose the terms of the agreements signed by pharmaceutical companies.

“If these deals are so great, why is the Trump administration afraid of showing them to the public?” Wyden said when announcing the measure. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his team would share details that didn’t include proprietary information or trade secrets.

The potential savings estimated by the Trump administration would be substantial as Americans spent $467 billion on prescription drugs in 2024, according to themost recent government data available. The analysis is premised on the idea that foreign countries would also pay more for their prescription drugs, which would diversify drugmakers’ sources of revenue and preserve their ability to innovate with new treatments.

The Congressional Budget Office in October 2024 estimated that a plan similar to what Trump ended up adopting could reduce prescription drug prices by more than 5%, though the decrease “would probably diminish over time as manufacturers adjusted to the new policy by altering prices or distribution of drugs in other countries.”

The scope of the savings claimed by the Trump administration are likely to intensify the scrutiny by Democrats, who counter that any price reductions would be offset by higher costs for prescription drugs not covered by the “most favored nation” framework. One of their main critiques is that pharmaceutical companies have increased their profit margins while working with the administration.

In April, staff working for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.,released an analysisthat looked at 15 of the companies that have agreed to this drug-pricing plan and found that their combined profits jumped 66% over the past year to $177 billion. The report noted that the tax cuts Trump signed into law last year “exempted or delayed many of the most expensive drugs” from price negotiations with Medicare.

The Trump administration has countered that they consider Sanders’ critique to be flawed, saying that it’s based on the list prices for pharmaceutical drugs instead the actual price that patients pay.

Health officials are optimistic that a recent hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship, which has tragicallyclaimed three lives,will not escalate into a wider epidemic.

While human-to-human transmission is rare for hantaviruses, rigorous contact tracing is underway across several countries to identify and monitor those potentially exposed.

Hantaviruses typically spread when people inhale contaminated residue from rodent droppings.

Though human cases are uncommon, the Andes virus implicated in the cruise ship incident poses a unique concern. This strain may, in rare instances, be capable of human-to-human spread, and viruses can change. Scientists are now urgently investigating the virus to understand potential mutations and its exact transmission pathways.

What is contact tracing?

The goal of contact tracing is to alert people who might have been exposed, keep tabs on them in case they come down with symptoms, and prevent them from spreading it to others.

The process isn’t easy because people are social and mobile creatures who spend time with others, visit crowded places and travel.

In the cruise ship outbreak, fewer than a dozen people are thought to have shown any symptoms, and there have been only five confirmed cases, but many more may have been exposed.

About 140 people remain on the cruise ship headed for theCanary Islands, where they will disembark, and none has been reported to be sick.

But authorities are trying to reach the dozens of people who left the ship about two weeks after a passenger died, but before authorities knew a hantavirus was the culprit. They were from at least 12 different countries, including from several states in the U.S. — includingArizona,California,GeorgiaandTexas, according to infectious disease experts and state public health officials.

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Authorities in St. Helena — the remote, volcanic British territory in theSouth Atlanticwhere passengers got off — said they were monitoring a small number of people considered “higher-risk contacts.” They were being told to isolate for 45 days, the St. Helena government said.

British health officials say two people who were passengers aboard the ship but flew home midway through the journey are self-isolating but do not have symptoms. The U.K. Health Security Agency said “a small number” of contacts of the two are also self-isolating but not showing symptoms.

Singaporean health authorities said they were monitoring two men who disembarked at St. Helena and flew toSouth Africaand then home. The two men, who arrived in Singapore at different times, were being tested for hantavirus and were isolated at the country’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, officials said.

The U.S. government has released few details about its work on any contact tracing.

Texas officials on Thursday said public health workers there have reached the two people who left the ship April 24, who say they are not experiencing symptoms and did not have contact with a sick person while aboard. They promised to monitor themselves with daily temperature checks and contact public health officials at any sign of possible illness, officials said.

Two Canadians who disembarked are in Ontario and have been advised to self-isolate since they returned home, the province’s health minister says.

Scientists are trying to understand theAndesvirus better

Apart from tracking people, scientists are also trying to understand the germ. The Andes virus, a member of the hantavirus family found in South America, may be one of the rare hantaviruses that can spread between people. Officials inArgentinabelieve the first cases may have been contracted on a birdwatching trip in the southern city ofUshuaia.

Argentina’s Health Ministry has yet to dispatch the team, but scientists from the state-funded Malbrán Institute planned to travel to Ushuaia “in the coming days,” the ministry told The Associated Press.

Scientists are analyzing the virus's genetics to see whether it has changed in a way to make it more transmissible.

They are also trying to learn exactly how it spreads, said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. They believe people are mainly infectious when they have symptoms, and, if the virus spreads, it may be transmitted through small liquid particles that blow out of an infected person when they talk, cough or sneeze.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge said Thursday that instructions received by immigration enforcement officers to makecivil immigrant arrests without warrantsdo not meet probable cause standards and should not used as guidance.

In continuing a preliminary injunction she issued in December, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell in Washington, D.C., said that “when conducting civil immigration arrests without a warrant in this District, defendants shall not rely on the probable cause standard or analytical approach set forth in the five-page memorandum” from the former acting director ofImmigration and Customs Enforcement.

Among the issues, the judge wrote that the instructions failed to instruct officers to assess a person's connections to the community before concluding that person is a flight risk and therefore needs to be taken into custody immediately.

The action is the latest step in a lawsuit filed by four noncitizens and the nonprofit organization CASA in Washington in 2025 challenging their arrests during immigration sweeps by the federal agency, which were part of a law-enforcement surge ordered by President Donald Trump.

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Howell approved another request by the plaintiffs seeking more records to help explain how the policy will be implemented, but she rejected some of their arguments and said the government had adhered to her preliminary injunction order on some issues.

TheDepartment of Homeland Securityresponded to questions about Thursday's order in an email saying, “ICE has authority for lawful arrests."

“Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," the DHS email said. ”The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”

“We got what we were asking for essentially,” said Madeline Gates, associate counsel at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. The ruling "reaffirms that federal agents have to comply with the law. They do not get a pass in doing immigration enforcement.”

“This particular case is all about what happens at the outset, before the arrest is made,” she said.