With a cryptic video that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard posted on X on Tuesday morning, the Democratic-congresswoman-turned-America-First-advocate reignited simmering concerns about the unorthodox intelligence chief among both her longtime detractors and some Republicans who voted to confirm her earlier this year.

“She obviously needs to change her meds,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Jewish Insider of Gabbard. Kennedy, like all Republicans except Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), voted to confirm Gabbard in February. 

“I only saw a post that she did, which I thought was a very strange one since many people believe that, unfortunate though it was, the nuclear bomb that was dropped in World War II at Hiroshima actually saved a lot of lives, a lot of American lives,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told JI of Gabbard’s video. 

In the social media video, Gabbard describes a recent visit to Hiroshima, Japan, where she learned about the toll of the atomic bomb dropped on the city by American troops in 1945, which spurred a Japanese surrender and the end of World War II. She warned that the world faces another “nuclear holocaust” unless people “reject this path to nuclear war.”

“This is the reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now, because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” said Gabbard, not specifying who she was referring to by “political elite warmongers” or which countries she may have been calling out. 

Gabbard’s video decrying “warmongers” prompted concern from Republicans seeking a more traditionally conservative foreign policy worldview. 

“She seems to be doing her best audition to be head of the Quincy Institute,” a senior employee at a pro-Israel advocacy group said of Gabbard.

One Senate Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, questioned Gabbard’s logic in raising the human toll of Hiroshima and her “warmongers” comment.

“I’m not sure I understand why the DNI would even need to make that point,” the senator said of the Hiroshima focus, later adding: “I don’t seek nuclear war. I don’t know anyone who wants nuclear war. There’s plenty of ideological diversity here, but pretty much universal opposition to that.”

Since taking office, Gabbard, who in 2020 was a surrogate for progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign, has generally been aligned with the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, which is increasingly ascendant in the Trump administration. William Ruger, the official she tapped for the high-level position that prepares the president’s daily intelligence briefing, came from Koch-affiliated institutions and has called for “American restraint” on the world stage. 

During her nomination battle, Gabbard faced criticism, including from some Republicans — focused in particular on a congressional trip to Syria in 2017 when she met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, her parroting of Russian propaganda about the country’s war with Ukraine and her defense of Edward Snowden, the former intelligence official who leaked classified information before fleeing the country. 

“It defies belief that someone would be criticizing [President Harry] Truman’s act of winning a war. We really need to get back to winning wars when we fight,” Eric Levine, a prominent Republican fundraiser in New York who urged senators to oppose Gabbard’s confirmation, told JI on Tuesday. 

Levine raised concerns about Gabbard’s ability to influence President Donald Trump’s approach to Iran, as nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are set to continue this weekend. He said that if Trump does the “right thing” — meaning he ends the Iran negotiations and supports a strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure — then the U.S. will “save a lot of lives, just like Harry Truman did, and will not require the dropping of a nuclear bomb.” 

“I’m very concerned about the isolationist wing of the Republican Party,” Levine continued. “I don’t know who’s winning out, because we don’t know what the end result is in Iran yet.”

Several Republican senators questioned why Gabbard would make the video in the first place.

“I thought it was not appropriate,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told JI.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described the impact of the bomb as “horrible” but said it was necessary to end the war, in which his father had fought. 

“Dropping those bombs probably saved a million servicemen’s lives. If you don’t want to get nuked, don’t start barbaric wars,” Graham told JI. “I think it’s a horrible thing to happen to people, but it was brought on by Japan, and if I were Harry Truman, I would have done the same thing because the casualty estimates were a million dead Americans invading mainland Japan.”

Alexa Henning, Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, declined to say whether Gabbard was referring in the video to a specific nation or to specific people. 

“Acknowledging the past is critical to inform the future. President Trump has repeatedly stated in the past that he recognizes the immeasurable suffering, and annihilation can be caused by nuclear war, which is why he has been unequivocal that we all need to do everything possible to work towards peace,” Henning said in a statement. “DNI Gabbard supports President Trump’s clearly stated objectives of bringing about lasting peace and stability and preventing war.”

Despite the criticism coming even from some allies, Gabbard’s views do not appear to have gone outside the realm of what Trump hopes to see from her. 

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a personal friend of Gabbard’s from their shared time in the House, defended Gabbard’s post and her service as DNI. 

“I think she’s doing a great job … She’s doing exactly what the president wanted her to do,” Mullin told JI. “People have been critical of her, and this is D.C., right? You’re going to get criticized for walking down the stairs wrong, so criticism is part of the job.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans penned a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on Thursday to request that he hold a hearing on how the uptick in antisemitism on college campuses is violating the civil rights of Jewish students. 

The letter was led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the top Republican on the committee, and signed by every Republican who serves on the panel, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Kennedy (R-LA), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). They urged Durbin, who chairs the committee, to convene a hearing “on the civil rights violations of Jewish students” and “the proliferation of terrorist ideology — two issues that fall squarely within this Committee’s purview.”

“With this current state of inaction, it is incumbent upon this Committee to shed light on these civil rights violations,” the group wrote. “This Committee owes it to Jewish students, and all students who attend universities with modest hope of having a safe learning environment, to examine these civil rights violations.”

“Our committee should examine why more is not being done to protect the civil rights of innocent students across America,” they added. “We must also examine the threat to national security posed by the proliferation of radical Islamist ideology in the academy. These pressing issues demand our immediate attention.”

A spokesperson for Durbin did not immediately respond to JI’s request for comment on the letter, which came the same day as a missive from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) requesting a similar hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. 

Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, sent a letter to Sanders on Thursday urging him to convene a hearing in his capacity as committee chairman on the uptick in antisemitism on college campuses. 

Cassidy’s letter, first obtained by Jewish Insider, marks the second time in six months that the Louisiana senator has written to Sanders requesting that he allow for a full committee hearing “on ensuring safe learning environments for Jewish students, as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Cassidy released a statement last week re-upping his call for a hearing, though he told JI that effort got no response.

“It is our duty to ensure federal officials are doing everything in their power to uphold the law and ensure students are not excluded from participation, denied the benefits of, or subject to discrimination at school based on race, color, or national origin,” Cassidy wrote to Sanders. “In the six months since my last letter requesting a hearing, the situation has only gotten worse.”

While Republicans have generally been more vocal about their concerns on the issue of antisemitism on college campuses, there have been bipartisan calls for action in the upper chamber. 

Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) have also asked Sanders to hold a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses in his capacity as HELP chairman. Similar to Cassidy, they have also not heard back from the Vermont senator. 

Separately, Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) requested a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser’s response to protests at The George Washington University’s campus this week. 

The duo penned a letter on Thursday to Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), who chairs the committee, requesting he bring in Bowser and D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith to testify on their respective responses to university requests to bring DCMP onto campus to clear out an anti-Israel encampment, requests Bowser denied. 

On the House side, where Republicans are in the majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) launched a chamber-wide effort to address all elements of the campus unrest. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the Education and Workforce Committee, revealed that in addition to her ongoing probes, she will have the presidents of three other schools testify next month on their responses to protests and instances of antisemitism on their campuses. The presidents of the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Michigan; and Yale University will be brought in to testify before Foxx’s committee on May 23. 

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, noted that her panel “oversees agencies that dole out massive amounts of taxpayer funded research grants… We will be increasing our oversight of institutions that have received public funding and cracking down on those who are in violation of the Civil Rights Act.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said that his panel was reaching out to the State Department and Homeland Security Department to find out “how many students on a visa have engaged in the radical activity we’ve seen now day after day on college campuses.”