The U.S. Senate has confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence (DNI). Gabbard has been one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominations. She will now oversee the 18 official U.S. intelligence agencies.
Gabbard was confirmed Wednesday morning in a 52 to 48 vote. All Democrats and one Republican voted nay.
Among the most important duties of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will be to provide the president’s daily intelligence brief. Reports say Trump wants more intel focused on economics and trade and less on how big, bad, and scary Russia is.
Establishment Opposition
During her confirmation hearing in January, Senate Intelligence Committee members peppered Gabbard with questions about her past support for Edward Snowden, who is seen as a traitor on Capitol Hill; her longstanding criticism of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which she wavered on before the hearing; and her stance that Russia was provoked by the West into invading Ukraine, a wholly unacceptable view in the D.C. Swamp.
Gabbard is a critic of the Uniparty’s sacred cow of American interventionism. She has skewered the intelligence that led to the Iraq invasion, saying it was based “upon a total fabrication or complete failure of intelligence.”
This may explain why the only Republican to vote against her confirmation was Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell, who recently penned an essay in support of more interventionism for the January/February 2025 edition of Foreign Affairs, the publication of the globalist think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
In his essay, McConnell bemoans the potential for the newly elected leadership under Donald Trump to reduce America’s international military presence. It is an astounding display of support for the forever wars that Americans are tired of. McConnell even reveals his desire that America would get better at fighting multiple wars. Nevertheless, his official reason for opposing Gabbard’s confirmation is her views on Snowden and Russia. You can read McConnell’s statement on the matter here.
Politcized Intel Agencies
Another problem the statists in the Democratic Party had with Gabard is her acknowledgment that the intelligence community (IC) has become a Stasi-like politicized entity. “For too long, faulty, inadequate and weaponized intelligence has led to costly failures, which have undermined our national security and constitutional freedoms,” she said in an op-ed published by Newsweek.
In January, she reminded Senators that the IC spied on Trump by using FISA to illegally obtain a warrant on his advisor Carter Page, all while using a Clinton campaign-funded false dossier as “evidence.” She brought up how Joe Biden’s then-campaign advisor, Antony Blinken, was behind the 51 former senior intelligence officials’ letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian disinfo,” which it wasn’t. Then there was former DNI James Clapper lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee by denying the existence of programs that facilitated the mass collection of millions of Americans’ phone and internet records.
Priorities
As the new DNI, Gabbard outlined her priorities:
First, to assess the global threat environment and identify where gaps in our intelligence exist, integrating intelligence elements, increasing information-sharing, and ensuring unbiased, apolitical, objective collection and analysis is provided to support President Trump and policymakers’ decision-making.
Second, I will deliver on President Trump’s commitment to the American people to end the politicization of the IC and provide focus to the IC’s essential mission, which is securing our nation.
Third, I will rebuild trust in the intelligence community through transparency and accountability.
Finally, I will assess and address efficiency, redundancy, and effectiveness across ODNI.
She is also expected to press intelligence agencies for information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that has not been released.
Background
Gabbard, 43, is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves and served combat tours overseas. She is also a former member of the CFR, which has been integral to the construction of a global government. Gabbard was listed in the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program, a designation she says happened without her permission or knowledge.
She left the Democratic Party in 2022. Her tenure representing Hawaii’s second Congressional District lasted from 2013 to 2020. During this time she amassed a poor score of 29 percent in TNA’s Freedom Index. This meansher votes aligned with the U.S. Constitution only 29 percent of the time.
But when it comes to issues more aligned with her prospective position as DNI, her record improves. She voted against renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2018, and introduced legislation in 2020 to repeal Section 702 of the act, which allows the surveillance of Americans swept up in spying on foreigners. In December, she came out in support of Section 702, calling it a “vital national security tool.” This was perhaps to assuage concerns among Senate Republicans in order to garner enough votes to get confirmed. She claimed that “significant FISA reforms have been enacted” since her time in Congress. These supposedly include new safeguards designed to protect Americans’ privacy.
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