Tulsi Gabbard Is Preparing to Resign as U.S. Intelligence Chief
Outspoken critic of foreign interventions had largely been sidelined from Trump’s national-security team
May 22, 2026
Tulsi Gabbard is preparing to step down as Director of National Intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter, capping a tumultuous tenure in which she was largely sidelined from President Trump’s national-security operations, including in Venezuela and Iran.
Gabbard has told associates she is leaving because her husband has been diagnosed with a serious form of cancer, people familiar with the matter said. Gabbard has been married since 2015 to Abraham Williams.
Her expected departure comes as Trump is considering fresh strikes on Iran if mediators don’t reach a deal to end Tehran’s nuclear work, or at least extend the cease-fire to hold more discussions.
Gabbard wasn’t a major part of conversations about the Iran war before it began in February, officials previously told The Wall Street Journal. She often diverged from administration talking points about the war, saying the U.S. and Israel had differing objectives and that Tehran made no efforts to rebuild its nuclear program since American attacks on three nuclear sites last year.
In recent months, Gabbard has spent time pursuing theories of voter fraud in the 2020 election at Trump’s behest, according to administration officials; she showed up at a Fulton County election center where Federal Bureau of Investigation agents seized voting machines earlier this year. (A series of audits and recounts commissioned by state and local officials in the aftermath of the 2020 contest found no evidence of widespread tampering or fraud.)
For years, Gabbard, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who served in Iraq, had been an outspoken critic of foreign interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, and had accused Trump during his first administration of bowing to neoconservatives.
Gabbard, who is also a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, ran for president in 2020. She endorsed Trump in the 2024 election and has been a popular figure in his MAGA base. Trump nominated Gabbard to run the office of national intelligence, which oversees 18 U.S. spy agencies, and she was confirmed by the Senate in February 2025.
While head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard worked to reshape the intelligence community through staffing cuts and organization restructuring, and a focus on border security and counterterrorism. She launched “ONDI 2.0” to overhaul the agency, and tried to root out leaks and investigate what she claimed was the politicization of the organization, and faced criticism that her reforms weakened the agency.
As Trump’s national-security team huddled at the end of last year to make final preparations for the operation to snatch Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Gabbard was posting social-media photos of herself on a beach in Hawaii, where she grew up, ignorant of the operation’s details.
She has fallen in and out of favor with Trump, who has instead relied on Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe for key intelligence consultations.
One of her close allies, Joe Kent, stepped down in March from his post as the top U.S. counterterrorism official, over his concerns with the war in Iran.
Gabbard’s resignation follows other recent high profile departures from Trump’s cabinet. Since the beginning of the year, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and multiple senior national security and health officials including Dr. Marty Makary, the former FDA commissioner, left their roles.