Tulsi Gabbard is resigning from her post as national intelligence director, ending a tumultuous tenure that saw her occasionally at odds with President Donald Trump.
In a letter to Trump released Friday, Gabbard said she was “deeply grateful” for the opportunity but was submitting her resignation, effective June 30, because of her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
“My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” she wrote.
Gabbard is the fourth Cabinet-level official — all of them women — to leave the administration this year, joining the ranks of former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
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During her time in Trump’s Cabinet, Gabbard has focused on declassifying documents on subjects that could bolster Trump’s claims of a “deep state” of government officials focused on vilifying him, his MAGA allies and supporters.
“While we have made significant progress at ODNI – advancing unprecedented transparency and restoring integrity to the intelligence community – I recognize that there is still important work to be done,” she wrote in the letter.
Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and former Democratic House member who ran for her party’s presidential nomination before leaving the party, has faced questions from both Democrats and the president’s base as the administration deepened its war with Iran. A staunch noninterventionist, Gabbard built her 2020 presidential campaign in part around vowing that the U.S. would launch no new wars, including a war with Iran.
Since the Trump administration launched the military campaign in February, Gabbard’s remained relatively mum on the issue.
“It’s not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” Gabbard said in a March congressional hearing.
A moment of crisis came when Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center and one of Gabbard’s top advisers, resigned over objections to the war in Iran. He was the first senior Trump administration official to publicly do so.
But even before that, Gabbard faced detractors across the administration along with a chorus of vocal critics outside the government.
Trump told reporters in June 2025 that Gabbard was “wrong” to have testified in April that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
That moment kicked off a parlor game of sorts among D.C. Republicans who mused about how long it would take Gabbard to leave the administration.
“I think Tulsi definitely leaves soon,” one source close to the administration told NOTUS in April. NOTUS previously reported that Trump had called allies to discuss Gabbard’s performance after that April congressional hearing. One was Roger Stone, a longtime friend of the president’s, who cautioned him not to remove her.
Trump, in a Truth Social post on Friday, said Gabbard “rightfully” wants to be with her husband and would be stepping down.
“Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her,” he wrote, naming her deputy, Aaron Lukas, as the acting ODNI.
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