Tulsi Gabbard

A Democratic member of Congress from 2013 to 2021, she joined the Republican Party in 2024 and served as Director of National Intelligence from February 2025, announcing her resignation in May 2026. She is named among the possible contenders in the 2028 United States presidential election.

Career

Gabbard was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives in 2002 at age 21, the youngest legislator in the state's history, and served until 2004. She sat on the Honolulu City Council from 2011 to 2012 and represented Hawaii's 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House from 2013 to 2021. She was a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2013 until she resigned in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders. She ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, withdrew in March 2020 and endorsed Joe Biden. She left the Democratic Party in October 2022 and joined the Republicans in October 2024 after endorsing Donald Trump. She became the eighth Director of National Intelligence in February 2025; in May 2026 she announced she would resign, naming a family reason, and her deputy Aaron Lukas was to serve as acting director.

Positions

Gabbard is known for an anti-interventionist foreign policy and opposed U.S. military involvement in Syria. When leaving the Democratic Party in 2022 she criticised it over what she called "cowardly wokeness", according to Wikipedia. Reporting on her resignation said President Trump had remarked that he believed she was "probably a little bit softer" than he on Iran's nuclear capabilities. She has said she would not rule out another run for president.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Hawaii News Now

Photo: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)