Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned from the Trump cabinet position Friday, saying she wants to support her husband as he battles an extremely rare form of bone cancer. Her last day is expected to be June 30.
Tulsi Gabbard’s departure landed with a personal deadline and a political aftertaste.
On Friday. the Director of National Intelligence resigned from her cabinet post. citing the need to support her husband as he fights an “extremely rare form of bone cancer.” In her resignation letter to President Donald Trump. first obtained by Fox News. Gabbard wrote that she was “deeply grateful for the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last year and a half.” Her last day is expected to be June 30.
The resignation closes a turbulent stretch at the top of U.S. intelligence oversight, one that lawmakers and political allies alike had watched for months. Gabbard faced growing ire from members of Congress after she defended Trump’s war with Israel against Iran and after her presence during a January FBI raid on an election center in Georgia.
Her exit also followed a broader churn inside the Trump administration. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem both departed as their roles shifted—Noem moving to Trump’s Shield of the Americas initiative. Trump’s Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer also resigned amid a misconduct probe.
For a while, it seemed Gabbard might not choose this path. In early April, Trump sought guidance from advisers on whether to replace her. Part of the frustration reportedly centered on Gabbard’s refusal to condemn the outgoing director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Joe Kent. during a congressional hearing in March. Kent had criticized Trump’s handling of the Iran war and then resigned.
When later asked whether he still had confidence in Gabbard, Trump’s reply was lukewarm: “Yeah, sure,” Trump told reporters. “I mean, she’s a little bit different in her thought process than me, but that doesn’t make somebody not available to serve.”
The push to force a preemptive move became part of the story too. with competing claims from prominent figures around Trump. Laura Loomer. a far-right political activist and conspiracy theorist who has been close to Trump. seems to have encouraged him to fire Gabbard. Roger Stone, one of Trump’s oldest allies, offered a different account. On X in April. Stone wrote: “Loomer tried to convince the President that Tulsi Gabbard was about to resign — in an effort to get Trump to move preemptively to fire her. The whole thing was a hoax. Fortunately, I acted in time.”.
Before joining the Trump administration, Gabbard was a four-term Democratic representative from Hawaii and a 2020 presidential candidate. She left the party in 2022 as her views grew more conservative on foreign policy and transgender rights. among other issues. and accused the Democrats of being “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”.
As spy chief. her tenure centered on the steady work of supporting and facilitating the president’s intelligence agenda—while also drawing sharp criticism over what critics saw as political alignment. In July. Gabbard launched an investigation into former President Barack Obama for what she called his “treasonous” use of national intelligence in investigating Trump’s ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election. Gabbard described Obama’s alleged actions as a “coup.” Critics slammed the probe as a distraction from outrage over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. and pointed to her longtime admiration for Putin. In the following months, Gabbard’s investigation quietly faded away.
Her presence during the January FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia, also became a flashpoint. The raid targeted an election center to obtain evidence supporting a false claim that Trump won the 2020 election. Gabbard told lawmakers she was there to observe parts of the raid at the “behest” of Trump. who told her about her role in the raid on the same day it was conducted.
Even where public disputes were narrower, Gabbard still found herself in the middle of them. She was involved in the March 2025 Signalgate scandal. in which a journalist was accidentally looped in a group chat of high-ranking Trump administration officials discussing military operations in Yemen. Gabbard said the inclusion of the journalist in the chat was a “mistake.”.
International policy was another fault line. In March 2025, Gabbard told Congress that intelligence findings assessed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” After airstrikes in June, Trump said she was “wrong,” adding, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”
Gabbard, who has been a veteran of overseas wars, had long opposed U.S. military intervention abroad, specifically in Ukraine and Syria. Yet she supported Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran in February. arguing that while Iran did not pose a threat through nuclear weapons. its long-range missiles were an “imminent threat.” In March. she said. “As our Commander in Chief. he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat. and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops. the American people and our country.”.
Taken together. Gabbard’s resignation letter frames the decision as a deeply personal act—care for a husband facing an extremely rare cancer. But the politics around her exit—lawmakers’ dissatisfaction. months of speculation about whether she would be fired. and disputes among Trump allies—makes her departure feel like more than a routine cabinet transition. By June 30, the intelligence leadership line at the top of the nation’s spy apparatus will be rewritten, again.
Tulsi Gabbard Director of National Intelligence Donald Trump resignation intelligence oversight National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent Iran war FBI raid Fulton County Signalgate Pam Bondi Kristi Noem Chavez-DeRemer United States politics