Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks during a press briefing at the White House, in Washington, July 23, 2025.
Kent Nishimura | Reuters
Tulsi Gabbard is resigning as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, becoming the latest Cabinet official to leave his administration, she announced Friday.
Gabbard, in a resignation letter addressed to Trump, said she has to step down in order to support her husband, Abraham Williams, who has “recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
A letter from Tulsi Gabbard stating her resignation.
Courtesy: The White House
“I cannot in good conscience ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming position,” she wrote in the letter, dated Friday.
Her resignation is effective June 30, she wrote.
Trump confirmed later Friday that Gabbard was “unfortunately” departing, writing in a Truth Social post that she has “done an incredible job, and we will miss her.”
Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas will take over from Gabbard in an acting capacity, Trump wrote in the post.
Fox News first reported Gabbard’s resignation.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who fell out with her party and later joined the Republican Party, was confirmed as national intelligence chief less than a month after Trump’s second term began. As DNI, she led the U.S. intelligence community, a sprawling coalition of 18 agencies and organizations.
Her tenure was marked by reports of behind-the-scenes clashes with Trump and other administration officials — which sometimes appeared to spill out into the open.
Gabbard, a veteran who was deployed to the Middle East, had endorsed Trump in 2024 on anti-interventionist grounds, praising him as a peace-seeker while condemning Democratic former President Joe Biden over the conflicts that began during his term.
As Trump pursued striking Iran to cripple its nuclear capabilities last summer, Gabbard released an unusual video warning about “warmongers carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.”
The video incensed Trump, Politico reported at the time. Asked later that month about Gabbard’s prior Senate testimony that Iran wasn’t trying to build a nuclear bomb, Trump replied, “I don’t care what she said,” and later said, “She’s wrong.”
Gabbard also drew scrutiny for appearing at an FBI raid on a Georgia election office in late January that resulted in the seizure of 2020 election records. Trump for years has falsely asserted that the 2020 race, which he lost to Biden, was rigged against him.
Gabbard’s resignation announcement expands the list of top Trump administration officials who have left or been fired so far this year.
Just over a month earlier, Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned as Secretary of Labor in order to take an unspecified job in the private sector.
Earlier in April, Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, who faced pressure over her handling of matters related to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She was replaced in an acting capacity by Todd Blanche, her deputy and Trump’s former personal defense attorney.
In March, Trump ousted Kristi Noem, who led the Department of Homeland Security, following national controversies related to her handling of aggressive immigration enforcement policies in U.S. cities.