Washington: Tulsi Gabbard has resigned as US director of national intelligence in President Donald Trump’s administration, saying she is stepping down to care for her husband after his diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. According to current reporting, Gabbard submitted her resignation on Friday, May 22, 2026, and said her departure will take effect on June 30, 2026.
The resignation marks a major change in Trump’s national security team. AP reported that Gabbard is the fourth Cabinet official to leave during Trump’s second term, while other reports said Trump publicly praised her after the announcement and indicated that her principal deputy, Aaron Lukas, would serve as acting director.
Gabbard said the decision was driven by a family medical crisis rather than a formal policy break. In the resignation details reported Friday, she said her husband, Abraham Williams, had been diagnosed with an “extremely rare form of bone cancer” and would need her support in the months ahead.
Still, her exit comes after a tense and often controversial tenure. Recent coverage has described her time as DNI as turbulent, with friction around major foreign-policy issues, including Iran, and broader questions about her standing inside Trump’s national security circle. Some reports characterized her as increasingly sidelined despite remaining publicly aligned with key administration positions.
There is one small but important administrative wrinkle: as of the latest crawl, the official ODNI website was still listing Gabbard as director, which suggests the government’s public-facing pages had not yet fully updated when the resignation news broke. That does not contradict the resignation reports, but it does show the official web record was lagging behind the news cycle.
For now, the core fact is clear: Gabbard has announced her resignation, and the US intelligence leadership is heading for a transition at the end of June unless the White House changes course before then.
