Do female cabinet members get a shorter leash in the Trump Administration? That may be the case, now that Tulsi Gabbard has joined Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem as cabinet members who have departed the administration in 2026.
Fox News reported that Gabbard has resigned from her position as Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard cited her husband’s recent cancer diagnosis in her resignation letter, and the resignation will be effective at the end of June.
The resignation ends a stormy tenure for Gabbard, during which she was not as publicly present as some other cabinet members. In addition, the Trump Administration took various actions, most notably the invasion of Iran, which are against Gabbard’s long-established principles.
BREAKING
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has resigned.
Per Fox News. pic.twitter.com/rxG2KL2TcS
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 22, 2026
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“Gabbard, as DNI, began a transformational effort to reshape the Intelligence Community— reducing the agency in size and saving taxpayers more than $700 million per year, dismantling DEI programs in the IC and more,” Fox News said of the departing secretary. “Gabbard, as of this month, declassified more than half a million pages of government records, including those related to the Trump-Russia investigation, the JFK and RFK assassinations, and more.”
Today, with great humility and sincere appreciation, I shared the below letter with President Trump. It has been a profound honor to serve the American people as DNI. pic.twitter.com/iBi6eURzvE
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) May 22, 2026
Gabbard was at one point Democratic member of Congress from Hawaii, who had a slow ideological transformation over several years, which included resigning from the DNC over their treatment of Bernie Sanders, and eventually endorsing Trump, before joining the cabinet in his second term.
As one member of Congress noted when Gabbard testified earlier this year, she was a poor fit for an administration that had pursued a hawkish line on Iran.
“President Trump has committed an illegal and unconstitutional act of war, pushing our nation headlong into a war with Iran without any authorization from Congress. A war that would be so costly and devastating it would make our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a picnic,” Gabbard had said in early 2020, after Trump launched a strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
