Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is resigning effective June 30, citing her husband’s recently diagnosed “extremely rare form of bone cancer,” she wrote in a resignation letter.

“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she wrote in her letter, which was first reported by Fox News Digital. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”

President Donald Trump posted Gabbard’s resignation letter publicly, and thanked Gabbard for her service.

“Unfortunately, after having done a great job, Tulsi Gabbard will be leaving the Administration on June 30th,” Trump said. “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her.”

He announced that Gabbard’s principal deputy director of national intelligence, Aaron Lukas, will take Gabbard’s place in an acting capacity. Lukas, a longtime Central Intelligence Agency officer, served in the first Trump administration for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Council.

Citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that Gabbard had been forced out of her role.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, has been one of the most prominent isolationist members of Trump’s inner circle, but has not been part of various key meetings related to the war in Iran.

Trump publicly broke with Gabbard over her public assessments of Iran’s nuclear program: She testified in March 2025 that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, which Trump said ahead of the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 was “wrong.”

Top lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long been skeptical of the former DNI. During her term, Democrats accused her and her office of politicizing intelligence and her role.

Gabbard’s staffing choices have also raised eyebrows. Earlier this year, one of her top deputies, Joe Kent, resigned as head of the National Counterterrorism Center, claiming that Israel had tricked Trump into the war in Iran and blaming Israel for U.S. operations in Syria.

Kent has since become a prominent right-wing opponent of the war in Iran, including spreading false Iranian propaganda at one juncture.

Gabbard has staffed up the ODNI with a series of other isolationist figures. Daniel Davis, an anti-Israel commentator, was briefly tapped as a deputy director of national intelligence, but the administration backed away from hiring him amid public scrutiny and criticism.

She ultimately hired William Ruger, another outspoken opponent of military operations against Iran’s nuclear program, for the same role.

And Dan Caldwell, a vocal Republican critic of the administration’s Middle East strategy and isolationist, was also hired to a job under Gabbard earlier this year.

One former administration official told Jewish Insider earlier this year they saw Ruger and Gabbard as undermining Trump, the U.S. operations against Iran and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, who served in three roles as a senior aide to Gabbard, in the Office of Management and Budget and on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, resigned earlier this week. Kennedy is the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy sought to become the deputy CIA director, but ran into opposition from top Republican senators.

“I thank Tulsi Gabbard for her service in this administration and in uniform, and I wish her the very best as she supports her husband Abe in his battle with cancer,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the committee’s ranking member, offered his prayers to Gabbard’s husband, but also told a reporter, “this position, now more than ever, needs to be an experienced intelligence professional that will know their lanes; that understands the Director of National Intelligence should be focusing on foreign intelligence and not involving himself or herself in domestic election incidents.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also offered condolences over Gabbard’s husband’s illness but said, “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.”