Eighteen intelligence agencies. An active war with Iran. And soon, no director.

Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation as US director of national intelligence on Friday, effective June 30, citing her husband Abraham Williams’ recent diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. “At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” she wrote in a resignation letter posted to X.

President Donald Trump confirmed the departure on Truth Social, saying Gabbard had “done an incredible job” and that principal deputy Aaron Lukas would serve as acting director. The warm words masked a more complicated reality.

A resignation that was months in the making

Gabbard’s husband’s illness is real, and her desire to be with him deserves respect. But the timing of her departure — mid-conflict, after months of escalating tension with the White House — has drawn scrutiny that no personal statement could fully redirect.

According to Reuters, a person familiar with the matter said the White House forced Gabbard to resign. That claim, attributed to a single source, has not been independently confirmed by other outlets. The White House has not publicly responded to it.

Either way, the departure had looked inevitable for months.

The anti-interventionist in the war room

Gabbard built her political identity on opposition to US military adventurism. A former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and an Iraq War veteran, she ran for president in 2020 on a platform centered on ending what she called misguided foreign interventions. She left the Democratic Party in 2022, endorsed Trump in 2024, and was confirmed as director of national intelligence in a narrow 52-48 Senate vote.

Her appointment to oversee the nation’s intelligence apparatus — a role created after September 11 to coordinate 18 agencies — was always an unusual fit. She had no intelligence experience. Her confirmation drew opposition from nearly 100 former diplomats and intelligence officials, according to MSN.

The contradictions became unsustainable when the US joined Israel in launching attacks on Iran on February 28. Gabbard had testified as recently as March that there was no intelligence indicating Iran had revived a nuclear weapons program. Trump publicly contradicted her: “I don’t care what she said,” he told reporters at the time.

During congressional hearings, Gabbard offered careful non-endorsements of the war, repeatedly deflecting questions about whether the White House had been warned about consequences — including Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. “It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” she said.

Sidelined and under pressure

The picture that emerges from multiple accounts is of an intelligence chief increasingly excluded from the administration’s core deliberations. According to MSN, during pivotal moments as Trump weighed military action or watched live video feeds of operations in Iran or Venezuela, Gabbard was often not in the room.

In April, The Guardian reported that Trump had privately polled cabinet members about whether to replace her, venting frustration that she had shielded Joe Kent, the National Counterterrorism Center director who resigned in March citing his inability to “in good conscience” support the Iran war. When asked whether he still had confidence in Gabbard, Trump initially said “Yeah, sure” before adding: “I mean, she’s a little bit different in her thought process than me, but that doesn’t make somebody not available to serve.”

She clashed with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and blindsided agency officials in August when she disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer on a list of people stripped of security clearances, according to MSN.

What happens to the intelligence apparatus now

Gabbard is the fourth Cabinet official — all women — to depart Trump’s second term, following Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

Lukas, her replacement in an acting capacity, is a former Cato Institute policy analyst who served as an intelligence aide to acting DNI Ric Grenell during Trump’s first term. He inherits the challenge of coordinating a sprawling intelligence apparatus at a moment when the United States is engaged in its most significant military operation in years.

For Gabbard, the departure closes a chapter that was unlikely to end any other way. As Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, told Al Jazeera: “Tulsi Gabbard ran for president, campaigning against regime change wars, and ended up serving in an administration that launched the stupidest one yet against Iran.”

Whether she was pushed or chose to walk — or some combination of both — the result is the same. The person charged with making America’s intelligence agencies work together during wartime is leaving, and the war is not.

Sources