Gabbard, 45, said she was quitting as Director of National Intelligence to care for her husband, Abraham Williams, after he was recently diagnosed with an “extremely rare form of bone cancer”.
“He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months,” Gabbard said in a letter to Trump that she posted on X. “At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”
Gabbard, a former Democratic congressman, married her Hawaii-based cinematographer husband in a Hindu ceremony. They met while shooting campaign advertisements, and he proposed to her while surfing at sunset.
Trump hailed Gabbard, whose job involved coordinating information from the sprawling network of 18 US intelligence agencies for the president’s daily briefing.
“Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her,” Trump said on his Truth Social network, adding that she “rightfully” wanted to help her husband with his cancer battle.
Her deputy, Aaron Lukas, would serve as the acting Director of National Intelligence, the president added.
Gabbard is the fourth in a series of high-profile women to have left Trump’s cabinet in recent months.
Trump fired Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem in March and Attorney General Pam Bondi in April. Labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer stepped down in April amid a series of scandals.
But the White House pushed back at a report that Gabbard had been forced out.
“This is false. Her husband, who is an absolutely incredible human being, has been diagnosed with a rare bone cancer,” her chief of staff, Alexa Henning, said on X.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said that “any suggestion that the White House forced her to resign over her husband’s health is slanderous.”
Syria trip
The former Democrat was a surprising choice as intel chief for Republican Trump, given her previous history of endorsing conspiracy theories and opposition to America’s foreign military interventions.
As a congresswoman, Gabbard had in particular expressed opposition to going to war against Iran.
She faced questions over her 2017 meeting with now-deposed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and her peddling of Russian propaganda — particularly false conspiracy theories about the Ukraine war.
She was also regarded with suspicion by some over her views on US government surveillance and her backing for National Security Agency (NSA) leaker Edward Snowden.
Trump pressed on with the appointment, but she appeared to be increasingly frozen out of decision-making in recent months as he headed toward the war with Iran.
Gabbard was reportedly not in the room when Trump huddled with his top advisors in the immediate run-up to the launch of the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb 28.
After the war began, she repeatedly contradicted or failed to fully back the justifications that the Trump administration gave for launching the war.
Gabbard declined to endorse Trump’s claim that Iran posed an imminent threat — an assessment that the administration used to justify the strikes.
She also said US intelligence had concluded that Iran was not rebuilding nuclear enrichment capacities that were destroyed last year by the United States and Israel — a claim also used as a major justification for the war.
The Hawaii native served in Iraq with the Army National Guard. The experience informed her opposition to America’s long foreign wars, as it did for vice president JD Vance and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth.
Gabbard’s mother, born on the US mainland, embraced Hinduism and raised her children in the tradition. Her first name, Tulsi, is a sacred plant in Hinduism, and she is a lifelong vegetarian.