Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard returns to Capitol Hill this week for an annual set of hearings on worldwide threats — her most important public look in months and her clearest alternative but to deal with the intelligence image surrounding the struggle in Iran.
Lawmakers are anticipated to press Gabbard on the administration’s dealing with of the Iran battle, homeland safety considerations, election integrity and the broader world menace atmosphere at a second of rising pressure.
The hearings will even supply a uncommon prolonged have a look at an intelligence chief who has spent a lot of the previous 12 months largely out of public view. The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to listen to from her on Wednesday, March 18, with the Home listening to set for Thursday, March 19.
Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks throughout a Senate Committee on Intelligence Listening to, March 25, 2025 in Washington.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Pictures
She heads into the hearings below contemporary scrutiny after the resignation of Joe Kent, the administration’s prime counterterrorism official, who stepped down Tuesday over his objections to the Iran struggle — the highest-profile administration official to resign publicly over the battle.
An ODNI official instructed ABC Information that Gabbard was not requested by the White Home to fireside Kent, pushing again on a report first aired by Fox Information.
Kent’s resignation sharpened questions already hanging over the administration’s case for struggle — whether or not Iran posed an imminent menace to the US.
In his resignation letter, Kent stated he couldn’t “in good conscience” assist the struggle and argued that Iran posed “no imminent menace” to the nation, instantly undercutting President Donald Trump’s repeated public justification for the battle.
Trump has beforehand stated Tehran posed an imminent menace and was “very almost” ready to strike.
Hours after Kent’s resignation turned public, Gabbard moved to publicly again Trump’s authority to make that decision.
In a submit on X, she stated the president, as commander in chief, is chargeable for figuring out “what’s and isn’t an imminent menace” and whether or not motion is important to guard U.S. troops, the American folks and the nation.
She added that ODNI’s function is to coordinate and combine intelligence, so the president has the perfect data obtainable to tell his selections, and stated Trump had concluded Iran posed an imminent menace after reviewing the obtainable intelligence.
Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard listens to a query as she speaks with reporters within the James Brady Press Briefing Room on the White Home, July 23, 2025, in Washington.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
She didn’t instantly tackle Kent’s allegations or point out him by identify.
The second is particularly putting for Gabbard as a result of few figures in Trump’s orbit spent extra time warning about regime change wars, intelligence failures and the price of Washington interventionism.
As a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, she was so vocal in her opposition to struggle with Iran that she offered “No Battle With Iran” T-shirts.
In an exclusive interview with ABC Information final 12 months, she once more spoke about diplomacy, navy restraint and the human price of battle in phrases that mirrored a worldview she has carried for years.
In that interview, Gabbard stated the stress of her first deployment in her mid-20s turned a part of her hair white, and that she stored the streak as a reminder of the excessive human price of struggle.
“Battle should at all times be the final resort, solely in any case measures of diplomacy have been fully exhausted,” she instructed ABC Information within the interview.
This week’s hearings will even unfold towards the backdrop of Gabbard’s broader and unusually quiet tenure. Earlier than taking workplace, she was not often removed from public view, continuously showing on tv, podcasts and social media.
As DNI, that model of her has largely light from public view.
In latest months, she has appeared largely in glimpses, at main administration moments.
Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel within the Military Reserve and the primary individual in U.S. historical past to function DNI whereas in navy uniform, appeared in uniform at Dover Air Power Base earlier this month throughout the dignified switch of six American troopers killed in a drone strike in Kuwait within the opening hours of the struggle with Iran.
Legal professional Common Pam Bondi, Vice President JD Vance, Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and second Girl of the US Usha Vance attend a dignified switch at Dover Air Power Base March 7, 2026 in Dover, Delaware.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Pictures
She additionally heads into the listening to with different controversies nonetheless hanging over her.
Gabbard has drawn scrutiny for her function within the administration’s election integrity push, together with her look exterior the FBI’s operation in Fulton County, Georgia, in January, the place federal brokers seized election supplies tied to the 2020 election, and her subsequent acknowledgment that she organized a name between President Donald Trump and the brokers concerned. She has additionally confronted persevering with questions on her investigations into election safety in Puerto Rico and Arizona.
ABC Information beforehand reported that Gabbard arranged a call between Trump and FBI brokers concerned within the seizure of election supplies in Fulton County, an uncommon transfer given the sensitivity of the investigation. In Arizona, a senior administration official instructed ABC Information that Gabbard was not on the bottom however was nonetheless “working throughout the company to make sure election integrity.”
United States Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks on the telephone exterior the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Heart in Union Metropolis, Georgia, January 28, 2026.
Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters
The listening to is shaping up as greater than a routine annual menace evaluation.
It is going to be the clearest public take a look at but of how Gabbard explains the function she has carved out contained in the Trump administration, and the way she reconciles the anti-war politics that helped outline her rise with the workplace she now holds on the heart of a struggle she is being requested to defend.
