Tulsi Gabbard resigned as Trump’s director of national intelligence on May 22 citing her husband’s cancer battle as the reason.
“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she wrote in the resignation letter she posted on X. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
There had been rumors that Gabbard would leave after Trump decided to declare war on Iran, a decision that caused backlash within the administration. Joe Kent, who was the director of National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in March citing the war as his reason.
Gabbard was previously a congresswoman from Hawaii and at one point, ran in the Democratic presidential race. A veteran, she made her objection to foreign wars known, which made Trump’s decision to strike Iran unsettling.
She sat for a congressional hearing on the war in March and was careful to neither endorse the war nor speak against it. She danced around question about whether the administration had been warned about the consequences of the ward, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Gabbard’s statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee directly contradicted Trump’s claims that there was an imminent threat. She said that Iran had made no efforts to rebuild its nuclear program after it was eliminated during attacks the previous year.
“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” she said when asked for her opinion on whether Iran posed a threat.
Gabbard will be the fourth Cabinet official to leave the Trump administration.
