Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's director of national intelligence, announced her resignation Friday, citing a rare bone cancer diagnosis for her husband, Abraham Williams. Her tenure ends June 30 after 15 months on the job. Reuters reported she was forced out.
Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas will serve as acting DNI. Trump posted on Truth Social that Gabbard had done "an incredible job" and expressed confidence her husband would recover.
Sidelined While the Wars Were Decided
Gabbard, who spent years as a Democratic congresswoman opposing U.S. military intervention, was progressively cut out of the decisions that define her office. During pivotal moments as Trump deliberated over military action against Iran and watched live video feeds of operations in Venezuela, Gabbard was not in the room.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe secured Trump's trust after the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and anchored the Iran war planning. Ratcliffe became a fixture at the White House. Gabbard was rarely seen there.
The friction was visible to the intelligence community. When Gabbard declassified a lightly redacted document related to Russian election interference, it alarmed CIA leadership and marked another episode of crossed signals between the DNI and the CIA director. As recently as earlier this week, both Gabbard and Ratcliffe declined to say whether Iran posed an "imminent threat" to the United States, a key legal threshold for the military action Trump launched without a formal declaration of war from Congress.
"At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle." — Tulsi Gabbard, resignation letter to Trump, May 22, 2026
An Anti-Interventionist in a War Cabinet
Gabbard's departure removes the last prominent skeptic of military interventionism from Trump's inner circle. She spent her congressional career, from 2013 to 2021, opposing U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan, Syria, and the Middle East broadly. Trump appointed her to lead the intelligence community. The intelligence community then systematically excluded her from the intelligence it was acting on.
Critics pointed to a record that included trading in discredited theories, declassifying material over CIA objections, and appearing on Russia-aligned media while still a government official. Her departure was treated by some national security analysts as the formal end of any internal friction over the Iran war. Reuters characterized the move as a forced exit, not a voluntary one driven solely by family circumstances.
Gabbard held the title of the country's top intelligence official for 15 months while the actual intelligence operation ran through Ratcliffe's CIA, which executed the Venezuela operation, anchored the Iran war planning, and became the functional center of U.S. intelligence decision-making. The DNI office, created by Congress after September 11 specifically to coordinate the entire intelligence community, now passes to Lukas, an acting director inheriting a portfolio already claimed by someone else in the building next door.
Sources
- Tulsi Gabbard resigning as Trump's intelligence chief — CNBC
- Tulsi Gabbard resigns as director of national intelligence — NBC News
- Tulsi Gabbard resigns as director of national intelligence — Washington Post
- Gabbard's resignation removes sidelined Iran war skeptic — Middle East Eye
- Intel chief Gabbard declines to say if Iran posed an imminent threat — NBC News
- Gabbard, Ratcliffe dodge questions about Trump's Iran war planning — The Hill
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