WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 9-8 to approve the nomination of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii to serve as President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, leaving only final approval by the full Senate ahead of the pick.
Gabbard, a former far-left Democrat and Hawaii National Guard member who endorsed socialist Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, vocally distanced herself from and eventually broke with her former party in recent years and endorsed Trump in August 2024, citing their shared alignment with more libertarian/populist strains of foreign policy ideology.
Trump’s subsequent selection of Gabbard for DNI, a position primarily tasked with those areas where her views differ significantly from traditional conservatives and Republicans, provoked doubt about her chances for making it through the Senate, with critics fixating on controversial past stances about geopolitical adversaries such as Iran, Syria, and Russia and leakers of classified material such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
NBC News reported that Gabbard won over some senators by pledging not to seek clemency for Snowden and moderating her past criticism of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Key to her support appears to have been Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a foreign policy hawk normally at odds with many of the stances commonly associated with her. Cotton vouched for Gabbard as a veteran who “understands” that “our intelligence community has grown too bloated, too bureaucratic, and it doesn’t do enough collection of intelligence.”
Gabbard’s nomination now moves on to the full majority-Republican Senate for consideration. Between having satisfied committee Republicans who had reservations and vocal demands by MAGA activists and influencers to approve President Trump’s choices, she is expected to ultimately be confirmed.