Tulsi Gabbard steps down as national intelligence director
Tulsi Gabbard has now shared a statement on X, confirming that she is resigning from her post as national intelligence director, citing her husband’s illness.
In a resignation letter first reported by Fox News, Gabbard tells the president she is “deeply grateful for the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last year and a half.”
“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026. My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
Her husband “faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months”, she wrote. “At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”
Key events
On the DNC’s autopsy report released Thursday, Trump said that it was riddled with typos.
Trump is hitting many of the talking points he has been hitting recently, that the GOP is against: illegal aliens all over the country, rigged elections, voters voting without voter ID, transgender people participating in sports and in support of eliminating mail-in ballots.
Companies and rich people are leaving New York, Trump said adding that the streets were dirty and riddled with crime. The Guardian has not verified his claims of companies and people in high tax brackets leaving the city or state of New York.
Mike Lawler and Bruce Blakeman, both running for seats in the upcoming election will turn this around for the GOP, Trump said.
Trump speaks at community college event in New York state
Trump has begun speaking at Hudson Valley, talking about how much New York means to him, and how the GOP must take it back.
“New Yorkers are people who built Wall Street into the world’s financial capital, who turned Broadway into the heart of American culture and entertainment, who dug the Erie Canal, and launched 1,000 innovations that built the middle class, the middle class of our country, who really built the country,” he said.
Trump will appear with incumbent Mike Lawler, representative from New York, and talk about affordability, tax cuts and upcoming midterm elections.
President Trump touched down in Suffern, New York, to speak at an event Rockland Community College Eugene Levy Fieldhouse a little after 3pm. The event is expected to begin shortly.
In her tenure as DNI, Tulsi Gabbard has been in the spotlight a number of times, including most recently in March when Gabbard testified that her office seized voting machines from Puerto Rico at the request of the office of the US attorney in Puerto Rico.
The prosecutor in question has been the center of a push by Trump supporters to revive a long-discredited conspiracy theory purporting to link Venezuela to Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat, the Guardian has previously reported. Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, the conspiracy theory maintains, controlled electronic voting machines worldwide and remotely manipulated results in 2020 to deprive Trump of a presidential victory.
The Guardian reported, in February, Gabbard blocked NSA from sharing a report about foreign intelligence with the White House chief of staff, according to a whistleblower.
The highly sensitive communique, which has roiled Washington over the past week, was brought to her attention. But rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further, Gabbard took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj. One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report.
In September the Guardian reported that Gabbard did not inform the White House that her office was revoking the security clearances of 37 people – including top deputies to the CIA director, John Ratcliffe – before it happened in August, according to three people familiar with matter.
The move caused consternation because it resulted in the White House not having an opportunity to closely vet the list before it became public and there appeared to be no paper trail from the president directing the effort, the people said.
After wishing Tulsi Gabbard’s husband a swift recovery, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff said the departing DNI’s only advantageous contribution to US national security was her resignation, on a post on X:
While the circumstances around her departure are deserving of our sympathy, let’s be clear: Tulsi Gabbard’s only positive contribution to our nation’s national security is her resignation.
She politicized intelligence. She dismantled critical agencies keeping Americans safe. She weaponized the IC to pursue baseless election fraud claims. And more.
We must ensure that her tenure — marked by a devotion to the person of the president and not to the security of the country — represents a terrible exception at DNI and not the new normal.
Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Nicole Saphier, sells an herbal supplement that contains an ingredient prohibited by the US military and which health experts have warned can cause liver damage.
Dr Nicole Saphier’s record of selling dietary supplements, which are only loosely regulated in the US, has raised concern among doctors and consumer advocates, some of whom allege she sells “snake oil”.
Amazon said it had opened an investigation into the products after the Guardian inquired whether they were in compliance with the company’s policies on supplement sales.
“Nobody who prides themselves as rigorous about science is in the supplement business,” said Dr Peter Lurie of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food and health watchdog organization. Lurie has been an outspoken critic of what he called wellness industry “grifters” inside health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement, who he said sold consumers poorly regulated supplements with unsupported claims.
The surgeon general is considered America’s doctor, responsible for communicating the best scientific information to Americans about how to improve their health. Previous surgeons general have issued influential warnings on tobacco use and educated the public about Aids.
Saphier specializes in breast cancer as a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New Jersey and is a former contributor to Fox News. She is Trump’s third pick for the job after his first two failed to advance in the Senate.
Reacting to Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation, Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the Senate’s select committee on intelligence, said his thoughts were with Gabbard and her family as her husband battles cancer and he appreciated the different leadership roles she has undertaken in her career.
On the next DNI, Warner said:
The Director of National Intelligence is entrusted with one of the most serious responsibilities in government: providing objective, fact-based intelligence to policymakers and the American people, regardless of politics or pressure from the White House … The next DNI must be committed to restoring trust in the office, protecting the integrity of our intelligence, and ensuring our nation’s intelligence professionals can speak truth to power, without fear or interference.
Trump announces Aaron Lukas as acting director of national intelligence
In a post on Truth Social, the president announced Aaron Lukas, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, as the acting director of national intelligence to replace Tulsi Gabbard, whose resignation will come into effect on 30 June.
Trump regretted Gabbard’s departure and wished good health to her husband, who is battling a rare form of bone cancer. He said:
Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her. Her highly respected Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Aaron Lukas, will serve as Acting Director of National Intelligence.
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