A top advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was escorted out of the Pentagon on Tuesday and placed on administrative leave, according to a Defense Department official. 

Reuters first reported Caldwell had been placed on leave for an ‘unauthorized disclosure’ of information amid an investigation into Pentagon leaks. An official confirmed to Fox News Digital that Reuters’ reporting is accurate but declined to comment on an ongoing investigation. 

Caldwell previously worked at restraint-minded think tank Defense Priorities and Concerned Veterans for America, a group formerly led by Hegseth. A foreign policy realist, he has argued that the U.S. should dramatically reduce its footprint in Europe and pull out forces in Iraq and Syria. 

Last month, the Defense Department announced a probe into ‘recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information’ and said it planned to use polygraphs to determine the source of leaks. 

‘The use of polygraphs in the execution of this investigation will be in accordance with applicable law and policy,’ DOD Chief of Staff Joe Kasper wrote in a memo. ‘This investigation will commence immediately and culminate in a report to the Secretary of Defense.’

He wrote that ‘information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure’ would be referred for criminal prosecution.

Caldwell did not immediately reply to a request for comment. 

Caldwell’s closeness to the defense secretary was underscored in the unintentionally leaked Signal chat on Houthi strikes, where Hegseth named him as the Pentagon point of contact for the offensive campaign. 

President Donald Trump is seeking to combat soaring prescription drug prices in a new executive order he signed Tuesday. 

The order instructs Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) to standardize Medicare payments for prescription drugs — including those used for cancer patients — no matter where a patient receives treatment. This could lower prices for patients by as much as 60%, according to a White House fact sheet.

Likewise, the order also calls to match the Medicare payment for certain prescription drugs to the price that hospitals pay for those drugs — up to 35% lower than what the government pays to acquire those medications, the White House said. 

The order also takes steps to lower insulin prices. Specifically, the order calls for lowering insulin prices for low-income patients or those that are uninsured to as little as three cents, and injectable epinephrine to treat allergic reactions to as low as $15, coupled with a ‘small administrative fee,’ according to a White House fact sheet. 

Additionally, the order attempts to drive down states’ drug prices by ‘facilitating importation programs that could save states millions in prescription drug prices,’ as well as bolstering programs that assist states secure deals on sickle-cell medications in Medicaid, the fact sheet said. 

The order also requires DHS to seek comment on the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, which the Biden administration authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act and allows Medicare to directly engage in hashing out prescription prices with drug companies. 

‘The guidance shall improve the transparency of the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, prioritize the selection of prescription drugs with high costs to the Medicare program, and minimize any negative impacts of the maximum fair price on pharmaceutical innovation within the United States,’ the order said. 

Drug prices have significantly ramped up in recent years. Between January 2022 and January 2023, prescription drug prices rose more than 15% and reached an average of $590 per drug product, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Of the 4,200 prescription drugs included on that list, 46% of the price increases exceeded the rate of inflation. 

Previous efforts under the first Trump administration to curb prescription drug prices included installing a cap on Medicaid prescription drug plans for insulin at $35. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s 145% tariffs on Chinese imports to the U.S. could mean that healthcare costs are particularly susceptible to price increases. Market research group Black Book Research found that 84% of experts predict that prices for medical treatments and drugs will rise due to the tariffs, according to a survey released in February. 

Additionally, Trump signaled Monday that tariffs on the pharmaceutical were headed down the pipeline. 

‘We don’t make our own drugs anymore,’ Trump told reporters Monday. ‘The drug companies are in Ireland, and they’re in lots of other places, China.’

Trump signed the executive order Tuesday, along with others that seek to prevent illegal immigrants from accessing Social Security benefits, and another one calling to investigate the impact of imported processed mineral on national security. 

Tuesday’s executive order comes days after the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told states Thursday that the federal government would cease assistance to states to fund nonmedical services geared toward things like nutrition for those enrolled in Medicaid. 

Fox News’ Alec Schemmel contributed to this report. 

White House aides are quietly floating a proposal within the House GOP that would raise the tax rate for people making more than $1 million to 40%, two sources familiar with discussions told Fox News Digital, to offset the cost of eliminating tips on overtime pay, tipped wages, and retirees’ Social Security.

The sources stressed the discussions were only preliminary, and the plan is one of many being talked about as congressional Republicans work on advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process.

Trump and his White House have not yet taken a position on the matter, but the idea is being looked at by his aides and staff on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile House GOP leaders including Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., have publicly opposed the idea of any tax hikes.

‘I’m not a big fan of doing that. I mean, we’re the Republican Party and we’re for tax reduction for everyone,’ Johnson said on ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’

One GOP lawmaker asked about the proposal and granted anonymity to speak candidly said they would be open to supporting it but preferred a higher starting point than $1 million.

They said the reaction was ‘mixed’ among other House Republicans. But not all House GOP lawmakers are privy to the discussions, and it’s not immediately clear how wide the proposal has been circulated.

Nevertheless, it signals that Republicans are deeply divided on how to go about enacting Trump’s tax agenda.

Extending Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and enacting his newer tax proposals is a cornerstone of Republicans’ plans for the budget reconciliation process.

By lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to skirt opposition to pass a sweeping piece of legislation advancing its own priorities – provided the measures deal with tax, spending, or the national debt.

Extending Trump’s tax cuts is expected to cost trillions of dollars alone. But even if Republicans use a budgetary calculation to hide its cost, known as current policy baseline, they will still have to find a path forward for new policies eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay, and retirees’ Social Security checks.

Hiking taxes on the ultra-wealthy could also serve to put Democrats in a tricky political situation in forcing them to choose between supporting Trump’s policies and opposing an idea they’ve pushed for years.

The top income tax rate is currently about 37% on $609,351 in earnings for a single person or $731,201 for married couples. 

But raising the rate for millionaires could be one way to pay for Trump’s new tax policies.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., one of the deficit hawks leading the charge to ensure new spending is paired with deep cuts elsewhere, said ‘That’s one possibility.’

‘What I’d like to do is I’d actually like to find spending reductions elsewhere in the budget, but if we can’t get enough spending reductions, we’re going to have to pay for our tax cuts,’ Harris told ‘Mornings with Maria’ last week.

‘Before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the highest tax bracket was 39.6%, it was less than $1 million. Ideally, what we could do, again, if we can’t find spending reductions, we say ‘Okay, let’s restore that higher bracket, let’s set it at maybe $2 million income and above,’ to help pay for the rest of the president’s agenda.’

But Johnson’s No. 2, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., again poured cold water on the idea Tuesday.

‘I don’t support that initiative,’ Scalise told ‘Mornings with Maria,’ though he added, ‘everything’s on the table.’

‘That’s why you hear all kind of ideas being bounced around. And if we take no action, then you’d have over 90% of Americans see a tax increase,’ Scalise warned.

Bloomberg News was first to report House Republicans’ 40% tax hike proposal.

When reached for comment, the White House pointed Fox News Digital to comments by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier on Tuesday when she said Trump had not made up his mind on another proposal to raise the corporate tax rate.

‘I’ve seen this idea proposed. I’ve heard this idea discussed. But I don’t believe the president has made a determination on whether he supports it or not,’ Leavitt said.

Fox News Digital also reached out to Johnson’s office for comment.

The Defense Department’s (DOD) deputy chief of staff was placed on administrative leave on Tuesday, following the steps of another Pentagon official earlier in the day.

Darin Selnick, the deputy chief of staff for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has been removed, a senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News.

Selnick is under investigation for the same leak probe that saw Hegseth aide Dan Caldwell escorted out of the Pentagon by security. Both Selnick and Caldwell are on administrative leave.

According to the Pentagon’s website, Selnick is a retired Air Force officer who has worked extensively in veterans’ affairs organizations.

‘Mr. Selnick leverages his extensive government and non-government experience advocating for veterans to position Service members for productive post-separation lives from the first day they put on a uniform,’ the biography states.

Both Selnick and Caldwell worked for Concerned Veterans for America in the past, a group formerly led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Reuters reported that Caldwell was placed on leave for an ‘unauthorized disclosure,’ as part of an investigation into leaked Pentagon documents.

The probe was announced last month, and concerned itself over ‘recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information.’ 

‘The use of polygraphs in the execution of this investigation will be in accordance with applicable law and policy,’ DOD Chief of Staff Joe Kasper wrote in a memo at the time. ‘This investigation will commence immediately and culminate in a report to the Secretary of Defense.’

An official told Politico that the leak concerned Panama Canal plans and Elon Musk’s visit to the Pentagon, among other matters.

More information about the leak is unknown, and there is currently no evidence to connect Caldwell or Selnick to that leak.

Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.

It’s too bad there are no cameras allowed in federal courtrooms, because I really would like to see Mark Zuckerberg testify.

He was the leadoff witness in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta, and that in itself was news.

The clash is the most sweeping attempt to dismember the world’s biggest social network, and goes to the heart of how competition is defined.

Not since the government broke up AT&T more than four decades ago has a mega-corporation faced the prospect of being torn apart.

The suit was filed in the first Trump term (the president couldn’t stand Facebook at the time), aggressively pursued by Joe Biden, and now has finally come to trial in a Washington courtroom.

Trump once told me Facebook was such a threat to society that he used it as justification for flip-flopping on his effort to ban TikTok. 

But since he won a second term, Zuck, like many tech bros, has been cozying up to the new sheriff in town, including a $1-million donation to the president’s inaugural.

There are reports that when the man who runs Facebook recently met with Trump, he asked about the possibility of dropping the lawsuit. Obviously, it didn’t work.

The focus of the trial is Zuckerberg’s decision to buy Instagram and WhatsApp when they were small start-ups.

The FTC’s lead lawyer questioned Zuckerberg about a platform meant to foster ties between family and friends to a concentration on showing users interesting third-party content through its news feed.

‘It’s the case that over time, the ‘interest’ part of that has gotten built out more than the ‘friend’ part,’ Zuckerberg said. He added that ‘the ‘friend’ part has gone down quite a bit, but it’s still something we care about.’

Translation: Screw the friends. Very 2010s. We’ve moved on.

Zuckerberg spoke slowly – at least according to reporters who were there – and he was back on the hot seat yesterday. FTC lawyers pressed him on a stack of emails he had sent:  

‘We really need to get our act together quickly on this since Instagram’s growing so fast.

‘Instagram has become a large and viable competitor to us on mobile photos, which will increasingly be the future of photos.’

‘If Instagram continues to kick ass on photos, or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we’re doing now.’ Which was a flop called Facebook Camera.

In yet another message, Zuck called Instagram’s growth ‘really scary,’ saying ‘we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this.’ Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and two years later spent $19 billion on WhatsApp.

In an email to Tom Alison, head of Facebook, Z offered alternatives:

‘Option 1. Double down on Friending. One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start again.’

Alison responded: ‘I’m not sure Option #1 in your proposal (Double-down on Friending) would be viable given my understanding of how vital the friend use case is to IG.’

Now we come to the fascinating part.

It’s not breaking news that Mark’s judgment can be flawed. Remember when he insisted that virtual reality would be the next big thing? 

But he argues that Meta has all kinds of rivals in the ‘entertainment’ area, such as X, TikTok and YouTube – and he easily could have added Snap, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and HBO’s Max. It’s all about the battle for eyeballs now. There are only so many hours in the day. Mindshare is everything.

And with group chats all the rage, Meta doesn’t do well on that kind of interaction, with Instagram as a possible exception.

Now of course it’s in Zuckerberg’s self-interest to testify that he competes with anything that has a screen. But it’s not that far off the mark. Keep in mind that Meta has 4 billion active monthly users.

I sure wish we could see the embattled CEO making the case that he’s awash in a vast sea of rivals.