Tangle - Tulsi Gabbard resigns.

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation, effective June 30, to support her husband as he fights a rare form of bone cancer. Gabbard will become the fourth cabinet secretary to leave the second Trump administration, following former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who were fired, and former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who resigned in April. President Donald Trump said that Principal Deputy DNI Aaron Lukas will serve as acting director when Gabbard officially departs. A special day.Heads up: Our publishing platform just launched a new feature that makes it extremely easy to give a Tangle subscription as a gift to friends or family. If you think someone in your life needs Tangle, you can click here to gift them a subscription! Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today's “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s job performance? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast. Today is Tuesday, May 26th. I am your very sick and congested host, Isaac Saul. I apologize, you're going to have to listen to me. But, you know, the beauties of having a coughing, one-year-old, just dispersing saliva. into your mouth, like the beautiful child that he is. I went down pretty quick after he caught a cold last week. So on the recovery, but had a good restful Memorial Day and glad to be back in the driver's seat here. Before we jump in today, I do want to give you a quick heads up.

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And welcome, everybody. I hope this weekend provided you with some time for a, reflection, for gratitude, for joy. And I just want to also extend my gratitude and thanks to those who are serving and have served our country. Thank you for all you sacrifice in order to preserve our freedoms and safety. And with all that said, here are today's quick hits. First up, a bit of breaking news. A panel of federal judges ruled that Alabama cannot use a new congressional map in the 26 midterms, finding that the map discriminated against black voters and with was implemented too close to the election. Alabama is expected to appeal.

Number two, U.S. Central Command confirmed it had carried out defensive strikes in southern Iran, targeting missile launch sites and boats attempting to lay mines. The incident comes as the United States in Iran negotiate a potential peace deal. Number three, Secret Service agents exchanged gunfire with a shooter who allegedly shot at officers outside the White House. The suspect was killed and a bystandard was struck by gunfire and hospitalized. An investigation into the incident is underway. Number four, the Orange County Fire Authority said that the risk of catastrophic leak or explosion

of a storage tank containing a toxic chemical had been avoided. The tank located at an aerospace plastics facility overheated and began leaking vapors last week, prompting the evacuation of thousands of people in the area. Number five, Pope Leo the 14th released an encyclical warning about the risks of artificial intelligence, writing that the technology could reduce humans to mere cogs in a system driven toward greater efficiency. And number six, Texans will vote today in the Republican Senate runoff between Senator John Cornyn and State Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The winner will face Democratic nominee James Tilarico in the general election. Senator, we are told that Tulsi Gabbard is resigning effective June 30th because of her husband's recent diagnosis of an aggressive form of bone cancer. Our thoughts, of course, are with Ms. Gabbard and her family, Director Gabbard, and her husband, Abraham. She said that Abraham has been her rock since they've been married, and she submitted her resignation letter to the president and two members of the senior staff announcing that her last day would be June 30th because of this diagnosis of her husband's bone cancer. On Friday, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation, effective June 30th, to support her husband as he fights

a rare form of bone cancer. Gabbard will become the fourth cabinet secretary to leave the second Trump administration, following former Homeland Security Secretary Christy Nome and former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who were fired, and former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez de Riemer, who resigned in April. President Donald Trump said that principal deputy DNI, Aaron Lucas, will serve as acting director while Gabbard officially departs. Gabbert is a military veteran and former Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii, who is known for her anti-interventionalist views. In 2022, she left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent before joining the Republican Party and endorsing Trump in October 2024. The Senate voted 52 to 48 to confirm her as DNI in February 2025.

In the role, she led the U.S. intelligence community, a coalition of 18 agencies and organizations, and served as primary advisor to the president on intelligence impacting national security. In a post on Truth Social, President Trump praised Gabbard, writing, she has done an incredible job and we will miss her. He also shared a copy of her resignation letter, which read, I must step away from public service to be by my husband's side and fully support him through this battle, adding that she will stay on until the end of June to ensure no disruption in leadership or momentum. Gabbard maintained a tenuous relationship with the president and his key advisors during her time as DNI. She was reportedly at odds with the administration over its decision to attack Iran in February

and was not included in pre-war deliberations. After the war began, she at times appeared to question the U.S. and Israel's relationship, telling lawmakers in March that the countries had different objectives in the conflict. She was similarly sidelined from discussions and planning for the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.

Several outlets reported that President Trump was likely to fire Gabbard before her resignation. The president was reportedly displeased with Gabbard's refusal to publicly support attacks on Iran, dating back to a video she posted in June 2025 prior to the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, warning that political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers. Central Intelligence Agency Deputy Director Michael Ellis is among top candidates to replace Gabbard, along with Representative Elsie Stefaniic. President Trump has not given a timeline

for nominating a replacement. Today, we'll share views from the left and right on Gabbard Gabbard's resignation and tenure, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. First up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left says Gabbard's resistance to foreign intervention conflicted with Trump's initiatives. Some criticize the outgoing director for not standing up to Trump. Others say Trump's resignation could benefit her politically.

In The Guardian, Mohamed Bazi said, Gabbard was undone by her resistance to U.S. foreign interventions and regime change wars. She repeatedly drew Trump's anger for her handling of intelligence around Iran's nuclear program and capabilities, Basi wrote. When Trump launched a new U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, Gabbard was still largely sidelined from the most senior levels of American policymaking that would normally include someone in her role. She was kept out of the White House planning meetings and absent from most of the administration briefings to Congress on the conflict because of her past opposition to U.S. operations aimed at regime change. In March 2025, Gabbert testified to Congress that U.S. intelligence agencies continued to assess that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. But she also noted that Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was at its highest levels and unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons, as he said.

Under pressure from Trump, Gabbert changed her tune and declared that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within weeks to months. By that point, she had seemingly lost Trump's confidence, and within months, he began musing about replacing her. In the end, Gabbard could not overcome working for a boss who demands absolute loyalty, but offers little of it in return. In Bloomberg, Andreas Cluth said, Gabbert leaves without having spoken truth to power. Gabard is leaving for a good and noble reason, to stand by her husband, who has been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. I wish them both the best, Cluth wrote. And yet, Gabard's departure must also be the occasion to take stock of so much that has gone wrong in the intelligence community that she was tasked to oversee.

and by extension in the second administration of President Donald Trump generally. After all, she is leaving just a few months into an unnecessary American war against Iran that both the old Gabbard and the honest current Gabbard would have opposed. Trump was especially irked, it seems, that Gabbert, when under oath in Congress, had the nerve to restate the intelligence community's assessment that Iran was not actively planning to build a nuclear weapon, Luth, said. And yet, Gabbard never took the obvious step and advised the president against attacking Iran, When pressed in Congress, she tried to dodge her responsibility, claiming the president is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.

On that occasion, as on others, Gabbard betrayed herself. As a veteran of the Iraq war, she has long been against entanglements and wars of choice in the Middle East or anywhere. In that, she is not alone in the administration. In the Atlantic, Shane Harris suggested resigning must be the best thing that ever happened to Gabbard's career. Because the president was not interested in Gabbard's views on intelligence, she tried to get his attention in other ways. Gabbard accused former U.S. officials of mounting a years-long coup against Trump, Harris wrote. And she took revenge on Trump's perceived political enemies by revoking the security clearances of current and former intelligence chiefs. None of this won the president's public admiration and did lasting damage to the intelligence community.

Toward the end of her tenure, the most salient question to ask about Gabbard was, why does she stay? When I pose this question to people who have worked with Gabbard in the legislative and executive branch, they tend to offer a simple explanation. She wants power, Harris said. Gabard ran for president once as a Democrat. If she decides to give it another shot, she has an opening among Trump supporters. The president's decision to attack Iran is polling poorly among voters.

Because Gabbard wasn't involved in some of the president's most unpopular decisions, she can't easily be blamed for them. That gives her a strange credibility in an administration that prizes loyalty over candor. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right views Gabbert's exit as a turning point for the America First movement. Some say losing Gabbard represents a fracturing of Trump's coalition. Others criticize the left's response to the resignation. In unheard, Michael Quinko said the resignation marks the end of America's first foreign policy.

As Gabbard exits the administration, it's clear that the white white, White House has moved in favor of interventionalism, Quinko wrote. Gabbard's warnings of nuclear disaster before the 12-day war earned a rebuke from Trump. Recently, her refusal to support claims of Tehran's nuclear capability in the lead-up to the American strikes on Iran in March struck a court of disloyalty in the White House. These events, no doubt, helped ease the way for her decision to leave. These stances showed her actions were indeed born of conviction rather than mere political expediency.

Though she never ended up publicly disagreeing with Trump in the same outspoken. way as fellow anti-war tribunes Joe Kent and Thomas Massey, she said enough to earn his ire. Just as the public, including Trump-2020 voters, is souring on an out-of-control foreign war, and as the specter of another in Cuba looms on the horizon, Tossey has headed for the exit, Quenko said. The question is now who will lead the charge for peace and America first in an administration seduced by the thrill of war? After Gabbard's failure in preventing Venezuela and Iran, the answer seems to be nobody. In the Times, Katie Balls called the departure a blow to the coalition of Trump 2.0.

Ever since Trump launched strikes on Iran, it has been Gabbard's absence rather than her influence that has been the talk of Washington. There have been whispers, sometimes shouts, that she was on a collision course with the president, Balls wrote. Gabard's value to Trump was never just administrative. She embodied the strange breath of his second-term coalition, a former Democrat, Iraq veteran, and anti-war critic who had concluded that Trump, of all people, was the safest, against conflict. Her appointment signaled to skeptical converts that there was room for them

inside the tent. Her departure tells them something else. Manga isolationists are nervous about what could come next if negotiations for a further ceasefire extension stall, Ball said. But while uncertainty reigns over the Iran war, Gabbard's exit is seen as a sign of the fracturing of the 2024 coalition, Ball said. The voters that took Trump to victory in the election were brought over the line by a promise of an end to political corruption, a.k.a. Drain the Swamp, an end to foreign wars, America First, and a focus on the cost of living. Fast forward to now, and Republicans are wondering what they have left to say to appeal to these voters come the midterms. In P.J. Media Matt Margolis criticized Democrats' hatred and attacks in response to Gabbard's

announcement. Gabbard is leaving on her own terms to be at her husband's side as he battles bone cancer. I have no doubt it was a difficult decision, but she should be commended for making it, Margo Lus wrote. Yet rather than allow her a graceful exit, some Democrats couldn't resist the opportunity to remind everyone exactly who they are. What does it say about a political party when a woman announces she's leaving public service to care for her husband fighting cancer, and its first instinct is to pile on? Senator Adam Schiff couldn't even get through a well-wish without turning it into an attack. He falsely accused Gabbard of politicizing intelligence, dismantling agencies, and weaponizing the intelligence community

to pursue what he called baseless election fraud claims, Margulis said. Democrats spent years positioning themselves as the party of empathy, of basic human decency, of caring. What we're watching in real time is something very different, a party so consumed by its hatred of Trump and anyone associated with him

that it has lost the capacity for a moment of simple humanity. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the writer's saying, which brings us to my take. First and foremost, I am wishing Tulsi Gabbard and her family well. It is a well-worn cliche in D.C. for a politician to resign, quote unquote, when they're about to get fired, citing family time is there a reason for stepping away, only for the real details to come out later. But this story doesn't really feel exactly like that to me. Yes, it's true.

Gabbard was reportedly wearing thin with President Trump, and she was boxed out of meetings you'd expect the Director of National Intellectual. to attend. Yet this alone isn't proof she was on her way out, and leaks about her potential firing could just as easily have been from people inside the administration trying to hurt her as proof positive that Trump wanted her gone. Aside from one offhand comment, Trump never really seemed to have anything but nice things to say about Gabbard. He was even conciliatory about their differences on Iran. Plus, the family story actually adds up here. Gabbard and her husband have maintain a particularly close relationship throughout her political assent, and he's even filmed her on state visits. His diagnosis sounds serious and urgent, and her decision to leave her role to support him

is admirable. As for her actual tenure in office, well, my judgment there is a bit different. Gabbard is one of the most confounding politicians I've ever covered. It's difficult to imagine now, but she was the vice-chairwoman, the Democratic National Committee from 2013 to 2016. She dramatically and understandably, given her worldview, resigned from that position to endorse Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. She ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, even selling her no war with Iran t-shirts, describing her anti-interventionist policy as the defining issue of her presidential campaign. Her staunch anti-interventionism, informed by her service in the Iraq war, became too much for her to reconcile with the party establishment. Gabbard quit the Democratic Party altogether in 2022, and she quickly became a fixture of right-wing media.

She was a regular speaker at conservative conferences, where she typically focused on how certain Democratic politicians had drawn us into conflicts abroad. In 2024, when Gabbard finally endorsed Trump, she delivered these remarks at a rally in Detroit, Michigan, quote, this administration, speaking about the Biden administration, has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts and regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we have ever been before. This is one of the main reasons why I'm committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House, where he can once again serve as our commander-in-chief, because I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the

brink of war. For good measure, she added that she was joining Trump's ranks to stop Kamala Harris, who she claimed had retaliated against political opponents and undermined civil liberties as vice president. We as Americans must stand together to reject this anti-freedom culture of political retaliation and abuse of power, she said. I've always been drawn to public figures who are willing to change their minds, and I often say there's nothing wrong with someone evolving politically. It's easy to admire the consistent philosophical bent of politicians like Senators Bernie Sanders or Rand Paul, but it's harder to support someone you trust when they suddenly diverge from a view you previously shared. I'm sure Gabrin has faced some unfair criticism simply for going from having

a D next to her name to an official in a Republican-led White House. At the same time, though, Gabard's career arc feels less like an earnest political evolution than a story of duplicitousness or hypocrisy. She torched her relationships in the Democratic Party, citing her anti-war stance, and then the moment she became powerful enough to do something about U.S. interventionism as DNI for the Trump administration, she suddenly abandoned her defining beliefs. Since Trump came into office, he's been saber-rattling and starting new military engagements abroad. During the Venezuela invasion and the brouhaha with Greenland, Gabbard was MIA. On the heels of those conflicts and his rumors swirled about a potential invasion of Cuba or Iran,

there was hardly a peep from Gabbard and seldom any reports of her working to slow the administration down. admittedly, she was in a delicate position. She probably would have lost her job if she stepped too far out of line and criticized Trump directly, and I think this marked long-game play for her anti-war agenda was staying in the administration. Yet, if she had been playing the long game, she failed. After all, Trump launched the war in Iran. The very war, Gabbard spent years fear-mongering about Democrats pursuing, and Gabbard seems to not only have been unable to persuade him against starting it,

but failed to even be part of the deliberations. If she was indeed boxed out of the decision-making process, why then abandon her central issue to hold on to a role where she had no power anyway? Then, to make matters worse, once Trump launched the war, Gabbert dutifully started serving the public the same robotic pro-war talking points

that were central to her criticisms of past administrations. In other words, no matter how you look at her DNI tenure, it looks bad. That's also to say nothing of other, low points of Gabbard's tenure, like in July of last year, when she held a press conference announcing new evidence of an Obama administration conspiracy to subvert Trump's 2016 victory. She alleged Obama laid the groundwork for a years-long coup and sent the evidence to the DOJ for a criminal referral. She then doubled down, saying there is irrefutable evidence that

details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false. Trump followed up the press conference by posting images of Obama in handcuffs, claiming he got caught absolutely cold. Investigative reporter Matt Taibi wrote several pieces about the new evidence that overtly implied Obama could be in the crosshairs of an investigation and senior members of his team may actually face charges. We then endured a brief news cycle of Trump's supporters and administration officials claiming Obama was going to end up in prison. In reality, as I wrote Entangle at the time, the quote-unquote new evidence was really a minuscule detail in a story we'd been over a million times before.

Almost a year has passed since that press conference, and you may not be shocked to learn that nothing has come of it. No criminal charges have been advanced, no damning new evidence produced. The DOJ tried and failed to go after Comey, so it concocted a new reason to indict him. President Obama and his other senior aides are all still walking free, was just a big concocted piece of political theater, the kind of thing you might call political retaliation and abuse of power. All in all, it's hard to view Gabbard's tenure as anything other than a failure. She failed to stop the administration from doing the very thing she devoted her entire political career to preventing a large-scale war with Iran, and then she participated

in exactly the kind of political retribution she said she endorsed Trump to stop. You don't have to feel negatively about Trump or Gabbard to see those contradictions. So, while I don't think her resignation was another secret political ejection disguised as a family issue, I do think her tenure had run its course and she has very little to show for. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your question's answer. This one's from Lynn in Westchester, Ohio. Lynn said, we just bought a 2025 new-to-us car.

The owner's manual is only available online, and the options and safety features are mind-boggling. All these features must have added new manufacturing and long-term maintenance costs to car ownership. Is there any empirical evidence that the number of car accidents and or deaths has decreased as the safety features have been added? Great question, Lynn. First of all, yes. Evidence shows that fewer people have died from motor vehicle crashes in the past 15 years, though that evidence is still new, should be qualified, isn't necessarily proof of causation. According to the National Safety Council, motor vehicle deaths have declined since 2006, from about 15.2 deaths per 100,000 people

to 13.4 in 2023, despite a bump during the pandemic. A few things stand out from a closer inspection of that data. First, deaths from collisions with fixed objects have declined, but vehicular collisions declined and then rebounded, while pedestrian deaths have risen over that time period. Second, almost the entirety of the decline came between 2006 and 2010, well before the most advanced safety features like lane assist became standard.

The Department of Transportation credits the decline in motor vehicle deaths prior to 2006, which can be traced all the way back to the 1980s to airbag prevalence, seatbelt usage, and limiting drunk driving. The Department also identifies unsafe roadways and pedestrian crosses as the factors that contribute most to motor vehicle deaths. The United States also has far greater traffic deaths compared to European countries, which many experts attribute to roadway designs. Overall, the factor that appears to have had the greatest impact on road fatalities over the past 20 years is the economy, specifically the impact of recessions on driver behavior. Decreased driving during the recent great recession caused fewer vehicles and fewer heavy trucks in particular to be on the roads,

leading to what is still the lowest period of motor vehicle deaths since World War II, 2010 to 2014, when elevated unemployment rates correlated strongly with decreased deaths. Looking at all the evidence, the big takeaway is that safety features seem to have contributed to the fewer traffic deaths, but driver behavior on roadway designs have had larger impacts, and the standard adoption of decades-old safety features and regulations have had more measurable benefits than the newest innovations. Although, just as airbags, and seatbelts required time to become affordable cultural standards, backup cameras and lane assist may also require several years for their impact to be measurable.

All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under-the-radar story for today, folks. On Thursday, Acting Navy Secretary Hong Kong told lawmakers that the Pentagon paused a $14 billion US arms sale to Taiwan due to a review of munition stock supplies diverging from President Trump's claims that he was delaying the sale as a negotiating chip with China. Following his trip to China earlier this month, Trump said he discussed the arms deal

in great detail with President Xi Jinping, suggesting that he was still deciding on whether to approve the sale. However, Kow's testimony implied that the Pentagon Review was the source of the holdup. We're just making sure that we have everything, but then the foreign military sales will continue when the administration deems necessary, he said. The Hill has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Over Memorial Day weekend, an estimated 135,000 people visited Arlington National Cemetery to honor fallen U.S. service members.

Among the weekend traditions is a 78-year-old ceremony carried on by the third U.S. infantry regiment, also known as the Old Guard. Each year, the regiment's roughly 1,500 soldiers place American flags at every headstone in the cemetery, over 260,000 gravesites. The tradition began in 1948 when the army named the Old Guard as Arlington's ceremonial unit and began the flag-planting practice on Memorial Day. For those who gave everything in service to our country, this is our way of showing that they will never be forgotten, Staff Sergeant Jacob Holmes, a former Old Guard public affairs official said. USA Today has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work,

please go to reetangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that get to a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.