Published on 22/05/2026 - 19:35 GMT+2•Updated 20:35

US director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation on Friday, citing her husband's ill health in a post on social media site X.

Gabbard said in a letter to US President Donald Trump posted on X that she was resigning in order to look after her husband following his diagnosis of "an extremely rare form of bone cancer", and would leave the administration on 30 June.

In a social media post of his own, Trump said Gabbard had done "an incredible job", adding that her deputy Aaron Lukas would serve as acting director of national intelligence.

Formerly a member of the Democratic Party, Gabbard ran as a presidential candidate in the party's primaries in 2020 on a progressive, anti-interventionist platform. She later dropped out before endorsing the eventual US President, Joe Biden.

Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022 to become an independent, decrying her former political home as being dominated by an "elitist cabal of warmongers" and "woke" ideologues. She then endorsed Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election before joining the Republican Party later that year.

She is the fourth cabinet departure of Trump's second term as president after Attorney General Pam Bondi, Labour Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Opposition to foreign wars brought her at odds with Trump

There had been rumours in recent months that Gabbard would split with Trump after the president's decision to strike Iran.

Gabbard had built a political identity based on opposition to foreign wars, which put her in an awkward position when the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on 28 February.

At a congressional hearing in March, she was careful to steer clear of explicit endorsement of the US administration's decision to launch a war against Iran, repeatedly avoiding questions about whether the US had been warned about the potential consequences of the conflict and Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier this week, she testified to lawmakers during an annual threats hearing that strikes on Iran last June had “obliterated” the country's nuclear programme and that there had been no subsequent effort to rebuild it.

The statement seemed to complicate assertions by Trump several members of his cabinet who insisted that Iran had posed an imminent threat. This caused another series of awkward exchanges with lawmakers who asked Gabbard for her opinion on Iran’s threat as the nation’s top intelligence official. She repeatedly said that it was Trump’s decision to strike, not hers.

A tenure marked by big changes

Upon taking office, Gabbard promised to get rid of what she called the politicisation of intelligence by government insiders. However, she soon pivoted to using her office to support some of Trump's most partisan arguments, including his claim that he won the 2020 US presidential election. She also worked to undermine the results of earlier investigations into Trump's Russia ties.

During her tenure, she oversaw a significant reduction in the intelligence workforce.

Gabbard was born in the US territory of American Samoa and was raised in Hawaii. She was elected as a 21-year-old to Hawaii's House of Representatives but then left after one term when her National Guard unit deployed to Iraq.

She is the first American Samoan to be elected to Congress, and became known during her four House terms for speaking out against the Democratic Party's leadership. She supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, which made her a well known figure in progressive politics in the US.