Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, submitted her resignation from the post to President Donald Trump on Friday, saying she was taking time to support her husband after he was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer.“My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer,” Gabbard said in her resignation letter. “He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”The move brings an end to her contentious tenure overseeing 18 intelligence agencies. Trump announced that Aaron Lukas, Gabbard’s deputy, would serve as acting director of national intelligence.Long regarded as one of the most prominent voices against US military intervention, Gabbard ended up as Trump’s intelligence chief when the US went to war with Iran, five years after she had called his strike on Iran’s top general unconstitutional. Her exit was amicable, but her tenure was marked by a steady exclusion from Trump’s inner circle on the national security decisions that mattered most, including the military operations in Venezuela and Iran this year.A Hindu without Indian ties Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, with her husband, Abraham Williams, as President Donald Trump speaks at her swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. (The New York Times)Gabbard, 43, is a four-time Democratic congresswoman from Hawai’i, a US Army reservist, and the first Hindu elected to the US Congress. Born to a Samoan-American father and a Midwestern mother, her Hinduism has no Indian roots. Her mother, Carol, converted in Hawai’i and gave all five children Hindu names. She was sworn into Congress on the Bhagavad Gita.She left the Democratic Party in 2022 and joined the Republicans in 2024, becoming Trump’s Director of National Intelligence the next year.Advocate for anti-interventionismEven as a member of the Democratic Party, Gabbard, once described by senior Democrat Nancy Pelosi as a “rising star”, held positions that ran contrary to the party’s line.Story continues below this adShe opposed the Obama administration’s support for Syrian rebels trying to topple Assad, and in 2020 called Trump’s drone strike on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani “unconstitutional” and a “dangerous escalation.”When she finally left the party in 2022, she described it as having been overrun by an “elitist cabal of warmongers” and “woke” ideologues. She was also critical of the party’s efforts to “divide” the country by “racialising every issue” and stoking “anti-white racism”.Gabbard spent the next two years building a media profile as Washington’s most prominent anti-interventionist voice. She became one of Fox News’ biggest political commentators, where she expressed outspoken support for Trump and his policies ahead of the 2024 election. In her endorsement of Trump, she said that the former President sees “war as a last resort”, echoing her own positions.Following a contentious Senate hearing in which politicians from both parties criticised her past defences of whistleblower Edward Snowden and Bashar al-Assad, Gabbard was confirmed as Director of National Intelligence in early 2025.Story continues below this adShe found favour with Trump on domestic political priorities, with her surprise appearance at an FBI seizure of 2020 vote ballots in Georgia winning her presidential support. She also pursued his mandate to downsize her office with vigour.Also Read | Trump’s green card rule explained: What it means for visa holders in the USAt the very outset, however, it was clear that Gabbard would have a limited role in Trump’s national security decisions. A report in The New York Times highlighted that her proximity to Vice-President J D Vance put her out of step with the administration, including the influential Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. Both men pushed for a more aggressive foreign policy, and Gabbard was consistently sidelined. It was CIA Director John Ratcliffe who delivered intelligence assessments during the planning for both the military raid that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the attacks on Iran.On paper, Gabbard’s office oversaw 18 intelligence agencies. In practice, the most consequential decisions of the administration were made without her.Her relationship with the wider intelligence community was markedly strained, with her presiding over significant turnover at her office and clashing with both the FBI and the CIA over jurisdiction and oversight. Her decision to move production of parts of the President’s Daily Brief, the most sensitive daily intelligence document, away from the CIA to her own office was especially contentious.Story continues below this adThe tension came to a head in March when Joe Kent, Gabbard’s closest aide and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in protest over the Iran war. In a fiery public letter, Kent argued that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the US and that the administration had launched the conflict under pressure from Israel.It was a position Gabbard herself would have held as a private citizen just months earlier. However, she notably declined to back him and deferred to Trump, telling lawmakers that “the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.”What to make of her tenureTrump needed a lawmaker with outsider credibility to lead the intelligence apparatus he deeply distrusted, and Gabbard fit the bill. Her anti-interventionist record and public criticism of the “deep state” gave the administration ideological cover for its distrust of the intelligence community.This credibility became a liability once the administration went to war, and her presence increasingly suggested that she had been brought in merely to legitimise the administration, not shape it. That utility now seems to have run its course.Story continues below this adNewsletterFollow our daily newsletter so you never miss anything important. On Wednesday, we answer readers' questions.SubscribeThis pattern is not unique to Gabbard. In The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1995), American historian Christopher Lasch argued that modern institutions often neutralise dissent by absorbing it, not rejecting it. Washington has long shown a similar capacity to turn heterodox figures into defenders of the system they once criticised.James Mattis entered Trump’s first term as Defence Secretary celebrated as the “adult in the room” before resigning when his principles collided with administration policy. More recently, Robert F Kennedy Jr’s promised health overhaul has already lost its FDA commissioner and surgeon general nominee within months, with his outsider coalition unravelling before it could remake the institutions it entered to challenge.Ultimately, Gabbard’s criticism of the intelligence apparatus did not survive her time running it. She left office defending presidential war powers she once condemned, even as the institution itself endured unchanged.