Pete Hegseth

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      US army to test enlisted men and women with same physical standards

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      The US army unveiled plans on Monday to require a fitness test with identical physical standards for men and women in combat positions after the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered the elimination of gender-based fitness requirements in frontline roles.The revamped army fitness test, which replaces the combat fitness test, will be “sex-neutral” and force female soldiers in 21 combat specialties to meet the same benchmarks as men – a change expected to drastically cut the number of women qualifying for these positions.“The five-event AFT is designed to enhance Soldier fitness, improve warfighting readiness, and increase the lethality of the force,” the army said in a press release.Gone is the “standing power throw” or “ball yeet”, replaced with a streamlined assessment of deadlifts, push-ups, planks, a two-mile run and a sprint-drag-carry exercise. For younger women, the standards jump significantly – deadlifting 140lb instead of 120, and shaving nearly 90 seconds off required run times.The new policy appears to contradict findings from a 2017 study of US army soldiers that concluded “gaps in cardiorespiratory and muscular performances between men and women should be addressed through targeted physical training programs that aim to minimize physiological differences” rather than applying identical standards.A 2022 Rand Corporation study also found that women and older service members were failing the previous fitness test “at significantly higher rates than men and younger troops”, which raises questions about the feasibility of the new standardized requirements.Combat soldiers must now score “a minimum of 60 points per event and an overall minimum score of 350” under the sex-neutral standards, according to the army’s press release. Active-duty troops have until January 2026 to meet requirements, while national guard and reserve members have until June 2026.Hegseth has previously said that he does not think women should be allowed to serve in combat roles, though he later moderated his stance. The former Fox News host wrote in a recent book that “women cannot physically meet the same standards as men” and that mothers were needed “but not in the military, especially in combat units”.Soldiers who fail to meet the new standards twice consecutively face potential removal from the army or, according to Sgt Maj Christopher Mullinax, would be required to transfer to non-combat roles, which will continue using sex- and age-based scoring.The army will begin rolling out the changes on 1 June, with full implementation guidelines expected in May. More

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      Hegseth blames ousted officials for leaks in latest Signal chat scandal

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      The embattled US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has defended his most recent use of the encrypted messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive military operations, blaming fired Pentagon officials for orchestrating leaks against the Trump administration.In an interview with former colleagues at Fox News on Tuesday morning, the defense secretary suggested the problems stemmed from former officials, appointed by this administration, for leaking information to damage him and Donald Trump, adding that there was an internal investigation and that evidence would eventually be handed to the justice department.“When you dismiss people who you believe are leaking classified information … Why would it surprise anybody if those very same people keep leaking to the very same reporters whatever information they think they can have to try to sabotage the agenda of the president or the secretary?” Hegseth said.In a statement posted on X over the weekend, the three dismissed top officials – Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick – wrote that they were “incredibly disappointed” by the way they were removed, adding that “unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”Hegseth, in the interview, also confirmed the news that his chief of staff, Joe Kasper, will stay at the Pentagon, but it’s “going to be in a slightly different role”.The controversy stems from recent reporting in the New York Times, after a second Signal chat was identified in which Hegseth is again believed to have shared sensitive operational details about strikes against Houthis in Yemen – including launch times of fighter jets, bomb drop timings and missile launches – with a group of 13 people, including his wife, brother and personal lawyer, some of whom possessed no security clearance.Hegseth dismissed those reports in the interview, characterizing criticism as politically motivated attacks.“No one’s texting war plans,” Hegseth told Fox and Friends. “What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination among other things.”An earlier revelation in March detailed how Hegseth had shared similar military information in another Signal chat that included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, who later published the messages after Hegseth and the White House insisted they were not classified.After the interview, NBC News reported that the operational details came from army Gen Michael Erik Kurilla, commander of US Central Command, who shared the strike plans minutes before launch, according to three US officials with direct knowledge of the matter.Less than 10 minutes later, Hegseth is said to have forwarded some of that sensitive information to the aforementioned Signal group chats on his personal phone.The first chat leak appeared to be a violation of the defense department’s own classification guidelines, and it triggered an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general into his use of the encrypted messaging app.The backlash against Hegseth’s misuse of Signal while running the government’s largest and most funded office – that could get a budget of $1tn – has only gotten more intense over the last few days.Representative Don Bacon, a Republican and former air force general who chairs the House armed services committee’s cyber subcommittee, became the first member of the GOP to openly support Hegseth’s removal.“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” Bacon told Politico. “If it’s true that he had another [Signal] chat with his family, about the missions against the Houthis, it’s totally unacceptable,” he added later.The former chief Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot wrote in a Politico Magazine opinion piece over the weekend that “the building is in disarray” and that “it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”Retired US navy admiral James Stavridis similarly condemned Hegseth’s actions, telling CNN: “There is absolutely no reason on the planet Earth he should be doing that and he knows it.”Despite the professional controversies – and the fact that the current administration appointed the officials he is now attacking – Hegseth portrayed himself as a disruptive force against entrenched interests at the Pentagon.“They’ve come after me from day one, just like they’ve come after President Trump,” Hegseth said. “A lot of people come to Washington and they just play the game … That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because President Trump asked me to bring war fighting back to the Pentagon every single day. If people don’t like it, they can come after me.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: Harvard sues White House; president backs Hegseth in Signal scandal

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      Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in a bid to halt a freeze of $2.2m in funding, as a battle between Trump and the Ivy League institution escalates.In a damning legal complaint filed with the Massachusetts district court, Harvard’s president, Alan M Garber, accused the Trump administration of trying to “gain control of academic decision making at Harvard”, adding that no government “should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue”.The Trump administration has sought to force changes at multiple Ivy League institutions after months of student activism centered around the war in Gaza. The administration has painted the campus protests as anti-American, and the institutions as liberal and antisemitic, a claim that Garber refutes.Here are the key stories at a glance:Harvard says Trump ‘slamming on the brakes’ to vital research In a statement accompanying the lawsuit, Harvard’s Garber said the funding freeze was putting health research into jeopardy, including improving the prospects for children who survive cancer, understanding how cancer spreads through the body, predicting the spread of infectious disease outbreaks and easing the pain of soldiers wounded on the battlefield.“As opportunities to reduce the risk of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease are on the horizon, the government is slamming on the brakes,” he wrote.Read the full story‘Full-blown meltdown’ at Pentagon over HegsethA former top Pentagon spokesperson has slammed Pete Hegseth’s leadership of the department of defense, as pressure mounts on the defense secretary after reports of a second Signal chatroom used to discuss sensitive military operations.Read the full storyTrump says Hegseth is ‘doing a great job’ Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth a day after it emerged the defense secretary had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family members, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.Read the full storyDemocrats land in El Salvador to push for Ábrego García’s releaseA delegation of four House Democrats has arrived in El Salvador to push for the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, part of a mission to challenge the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with a supreme court order to facilitate his returnto the United States.Read the full storyStock markets fall as Trump calls Fed chair ‘a major loser’US stock markets started falling again on Monday morning as Trump continued attacks against the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, whom the president called “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.Read the full storyTrump axes key STI lab amid dramatic rise in syphilisThe Trump administration’s cuts to a sexually transmitted infection lab at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention comes as some states announce enormous increases in syphilis. The Trump administration has made deep cuts to health programs, affecting expert leadership and programs that surveil, test and research STIs.Read the full storyFederal employees ‘improperly’ shared sensitive documentsUS government employees “improperly” shared sensitive documents, including White House blueprints, with thousands of federal workers, the Washington Post reported. Staff at an independent agency that oversees the construction and preservation of government buildings, shared a Google Drive folder contacting confidential files to all GSA staff members, totaling more than 11,200 people.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The US supreme court heard arguments in a case that could threaten Americans’ access to free preventive healthcare services under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

      British lawmakers and peers have called for Trump to be blocked from addressing parliament during his UK visit.

      Hundreds of marches, pickets and cleanup events took place across the US in the run-up to Earth Day as environmental and climate groups step up resistance to the Trump administration’s “war on the planet”.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 20 April 2025. More

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      Trump says Hegseth is ‘doing a great job’ despite reports of second Signal chat

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      Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth a day after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.“He’s doing a great job. Ask the Houthis how he’s doing,” Trump said dismissively, referring to the rebel group in Yemen targeted by those missile strikes, on the sidelines of the White House Easter egg roll event on Monday.Hegseth was revealed to have shared, in a series of messages, plans about US strikes against the Houthis on 15 March before they happened in the Signal group chat that included his wife, his brother and a number of his top military aides.The details that Hegseth sent in were essentially the same information that he shared in a separate Signal group chat earlier this year that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic in addition to JD Vance and other top Trump officials, a person directly familiar with the messages said.But pressure on Hegseth has so far come from people outside of the White House. Trump called the defense secretary on Sunday after the story broke and aides concluded that it had been leaked to the news media by a former Hegseth aide who was in the group chat but abruptly fired last week.Trump has resisted firing top officials in his second term, not wanting to be seen as caving to a media swarm even if he has been unhappy with the negative coverage. Trump also stuck by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who had added the editor of the Atlantic to the first chat.According to a person familiar with the call, Trump told Hegseth that he had his support and that disgruntled leakers were to blame for the story, which was first reported by the New York Times.Trump also told his team to back Hegseth in public, and senior Trump aides repeated their defense line that none of the information shared in either of the group chats were classified, although the accusations have centered on why it was shared with Hegseth’s wife, for instance, since she is not a Pentagon official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe defense secretary himself appeared furious when asked about the second Signal chat during the White House Easter egg roll event on the South Lawn, telling reporters that the story was a “hit piece” that repeated his defense that it had been pushed by “disgruntled former employees”.But Hegseth faced growing pressure to resign after John Ullyot, his former spokesperson, wrote in an extraordinary opinion essay in Politico on Sunday that the Pentagon was “in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership”.Republican congressman Don Bacon, who sits on the House armed services committee, did not explicitly call for Hegseth’s resignation but suggested he would not keep Hegseth in place were he was the president.“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” said Bacon, a former air force general. “I’m not in the White House and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.” More

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      ‘Full-blown meltdown’ at Pentagon after Hegseth’s second Signal chat revealed

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      Pressure was mounting on the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, on Monday following reports of a second Signal chatroom used to discuss sensitive military operations, while a former top Pentagon spokesperson slammed the US’s top military official’s leadership of the Department of Defense.John Ullyot, who resigned last week after initially serving as Pentagon spokesperson, said in a opinion essay published by Politico on Sunday that the Pentagon has been overwhelmed by staff drama and turnover in the initial months of the second Trump administration.Ullyot called the situation a “full-blown meltdown” that could cost Hegseth, a 44-year-old former Fox News host and national guard officer, his job as defense secretary.“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot wrote.Donald Trump Jr pushed back on the opinion piece, saying the author is “officially exiled” from Trump’s political movement. “This guy is not America First,” Trump Jr wrote on X. “I’ve been hearing for years that he works his ass off to subvert my father’s agenda. That ends today.”The warning came as the New York Times reported that Hegseth shared details of a US attack on Yemeni Houthi rebels last month in a second Signal chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people.The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, were made public by the Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who had been accidentally added to the group.The existence of a second Signal chat, coupled with Ullyot’s devastating portrait of the Pentagon under Hegseth, is likely to increase pressure on the White House to take action.Trump defended Hegseth at the annual Easter egg roll event at the White House.“Pete’s doing a great job,” the president said. “Just ask the Houthis how he’s doing. It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories. It sounds like disgruntled employees. He was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people and that’s what he’s doing. You don’t always have friends when you do that.”Hegseth himself blamed “disgruntled former employees” in remarks to reporters at the same event.“What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax,” Hegseth said. “This is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.”He continued: “Not going to work with me, because we’re changing the defense department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of war-fighters. And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter.”The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, issued a statement in a post on X on Sunday night following the New York Times report.“Another day, another old story – back from the dead,” Parnell said. “The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda. This time, the New York Times – and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage – are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article.“There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story. What is true is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is continuing to become stronger and more efficient in executing President Trump’s agenda. We’ve already achieved so much for the American warfighter, and will never back down.”Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic senator from Illinois and combat veteran, said in a statement that the second Signal chat put the lives of US men and women in uniform at greater risk:“How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he isn’t only a f*cking liar, he is a threat to our national security?“Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity,” Duckworth said. “He must resign in disgrace.”Jack Reed, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island and a senior member of the Senate armed services committee, said the report, if true, “is another troubling example of Secretary Hegseth’s reckless disregard for the laws and protocols that every other military service member is required to follow”.Reed called on Hegseth to “immediately explain why he reportedly texted classified information that could endanger American service members’ lives on a commercial app that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer”.Reed said he had “warned that Mr Hegseth lacks the experience, competence, and character to run the Department of Defense. In light of the ongoing chaos, dysfunction, and mass firings under Mr Hegseth’s leadership, it seems that those objections were well-founded.”Ullyot warned that under Hegseth “the Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama” and said “the president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon.” More

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      Pete Hegseth reported to have shared Yemen attack details in second Signal chat – US politics live

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      Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and finance minister Jens Stoltenberg will meet with US president Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, the prime minister’s office said.The meeting at the White House will, among other things, cover the security policy situation, Nato and the war in Ukraine as well as trade and business topics, the statement on Monday said.“Norway and the US cooperate in a number of areas, and the US is an important trading partner for Norway. I look forward to talking about areas where we can cooperate even more closely in the future,” Stoere said.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with news that defense secretary Pete Hegseth sent detailed information about military strikes on Yemen in March to a private Signal group chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported.The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, was made public last month by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the group by Waltz.The fact that Hegseth also shared the plans in a second Signal group chat, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Times, is likely to add to growing criticism of the former Fox weekend anchor’s ability to manage the Pentagon, a massive organization which operates in matters of life and death around the globe.According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.See our full report here:In other news:

      Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports. Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson. Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US.

      Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US. The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.

      Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off. “I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold,” Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union, adding “but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”

      Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said on Sunday that Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University and other schools are having detrimental ripple effects, with the shutdown of research labs and cuts to hospitals linked to colleges. During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Democratic governor said that the effects on Harvard are damaging “American competitiveness”, since a number of researchers are leaving the US for opportunities in other countries. After decades of investment in science and innovation, she said: “intellectual assets are being given away.”

      A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality. The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft. More

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      Pete Hegseth shared Yemen attack details in second Signal chat – report

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      Before the US launched military strikes on Yemen in March, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent detailed information about the planned attacks to a private Signal group chat that he created himself, which included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported on Sunday.The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, was made public last month by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the group by Waltz.The fact that Hegseth also shared the plans in a second Signal group chat, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Times, is likely to add to growing criticism of the former Fox weekend anchor’s ability to manage the Pentagon, a massive organization which operates in matters of life and death around the globe.According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.Hegseth has previously been criticized for including his wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, in sensitive meetings with foreign leaders, including a discussion of the war in Ukraine with Britain’s most senior defense officials at the Pentagon last month, during which she was pictured sitting directly behind her husband. Phil Hegseth, the secretary’s younger brother, is a podcast producer who was recently hired as a Department of Homeland Security liaison to the Pentagon. It is unclear why either would need to know the details of strike plans in advance.According to the Times, Hegseth used his private phone, rather than a government device, to access the Signal chat with his family and friends.CNN reported later on Sunday that three sources familiar with Hegseth’s private Signal group confirmed to the broadcaster that he had used it to share Yemen attack plans before the strikes were launched.The same information was also confirmed to the Associated Press by a source familiar with the group chat who said that it included 13 people.Shortly after the news of the second Signal chat broke, Politico published an opinion article by Hegseth’s former press secretary, John Ullyot, which began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership”. More

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      Hegseth adviser placed on leave after investigation into Pentagon leaks

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      One of US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s leading advisers, Dan Caldwell, was reportedly put on leave and removed from the Pentagon on Tuesday following a Department of Defense investigation into leaks.Caldwell was escorted out of the Pentagon after being identified during the investigation and subsequently placed on administrative leave for “an unauthorized disclosure”, a source told Reuters.“The investigation remains ongoing,” the source, an official within the administration, said. The source did not go into detail about the alleged disclosure of information, and they did not reveal whether it was made to a journalist or another entity.A memo signed 21 March by Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, requested an investigation into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications”. The memo also mentions a potential “use of polygraphs in the execution of this investigation” but it is not currently known if Caldwell was subjected to a polygraph test.“I expect to be informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure, and that such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution,” Kasper wrote in the letter.Caldwell has played a significant role as Hegseth’s adviser, with the defense secretary naming Caldwell as the best staff point of contact for the National Security Council as it prepared for the launch of strikes against the Houthis in Yemen in the leaked Signal chat published by the Atlantic last month.The decision to put Caldwell on administrative leave is reportedly separate from the wave of federal firings in the past few weeks under the Trump administration.Caldwell, a Marine Corps veteran, previously worked for Concerned Veterans for America, a non-profit group with strong ties to Republican lawmakers and promoting conservative policies.He had worked with Hegseth at that organization before he joined Hegseth’s defense department team. More