The Senate voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence on Wednesday, with Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky the only member of his party to vote against President Donald Trump’s nominee.
The vote was 52 to 48. No Democrats voted in support for the former lawmaker.
Gabbard has been one of Trump’s most contentious nominees because of her past remarks on foreign adversaries and concerns about whether she has the experience to do the job. But Republican senators — many of whom had expressed reservations about Gabbard as DNI — overwhelmingly backed her nomination.
While McConnell’s office did not immediately release a statement explaining his vote, it is in keeping with his decision to vote no on another controversial Trump pick, now-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Gabbard will now oversee the work of the country’s 18 spy agencies – the same intelligence community that she has expressed skepticism of in the past. As DNI, she will also serve as President Trump’s primary intelligence adviser.
Once seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Gabbard has traversed from the left flank of her former party, backing Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, to endorsing Trump eight years later. Her past foreign policy views have defied easy categorization and have caused alarm among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
She has been criticized for a 2017 meeting with Syria’s then-President Bashar al-Assad who had been isolated by the international community for his use of chemical weapons against his own citizens. She also has echoed Russian talking points over the wars in Ukraine and Syria. And while in Congress she introduced a resolution calling for the federal government to drop all charges against former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked a trove of classified documents to the press.
But President Donald Trump defended her “fearless spirit” as he announced her nomination in November. She became a staunch defender of Trump after joining the Republican party in 2024, campaigning on his behalf ahead of the election.
Gabbard is also an Iraq war combat veteran, and her experience serving overseas in the Army National Guard left her deeply skeptical of overseas U.S. military intervention, aligning her with the growing isolationist wing of the Republican party.
During a contentious confirmation hearing last month, Republican and Democratic senators quizzed Gabbard about her past remarks on the war in Ukraine, her views of a controversial government surveillance authority known as section 702 and her 2017 trip to Syria where she also met with a prominent cleric, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who had previously threatened to unleash a wave of suicide bombers in the United States.
In her new role, Gabbard wields immense power on paper but it’s unclear who Trump will ultimately favor as his principle intelligence advisor with John Rafcliffe, a loyal ally, at the helm of the CIA.
In her confirmation hearing, Gabbard’s views on Snowden became a particular flashpoint, with Republicans joining Democrats in pressing her to call him a traitor. His 2013 leak is widely seen as a catastrophe by U.S. intelligence officials. Snowden now resides in Russia.
Gabbard acknowledged that Snowden had broken the law, but declined to address questions of whether he was a traitor.
“The fact is, he also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government,” Gabbard said during the hearing. She has said she would encourage intelligence officials to use established whistleblower channels to securely report their concerns.
Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Curtis (Utah) had also been closely watched as potential swing votes on Gabbard, but both ultimately voted to confirm her as DNI.
“While I continue to have concerns about certain positions she has previously taken, I appreciate her commitment to rein in the outsized scope of the agency,” Murkowski said in a statement on Monday.
In a post on X on Wednesday morning, Curtis outlined his thinking. “After working through a process, examining her nomination, consulting with experts, and following my conscience, I will be voting for Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence,” he wrote. “Anyone that followed my process knows my vote wasn’t predetermined, but the fact that my trusted colleagues in the intelligence community supported her was significant.”
Democrats were quick to warn that Gabbard could be a liability in her new post.
“Tulsi Gabbard is infamous for defending despots — including Vlaidmir Putin and Bashar al-Assad — and traitors such as Edward Snowden,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said in a statement shortly after Wednesday’s vote.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was established in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks to enhance intelligence sharing across the U.S. government. Critics argue that it has grown too large and has added another layer of bureaucracy to the intelligence community.
Gabbard’s promise to streamline the office have been welcomed by Republicans, amid efforts led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to winnow down the federal workforce.
“I’m glad that Ms. Gabbard plans to focus on identifying and eliminating redundancies and inefficiencies to restore the office to what it was originally designed to do,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said in remarks on Monday evening.
Federal employees at ODNI and a number of other intelligence agencies have received deferred resignation offers from the Trump administration despite previous statements by the Office of Personnel Management that those working in national security would be exempt.
