Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced on Friday that she would resign, saying that her husband, Abraham, has been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. “At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” Gabbard wrote in her resignation letter to Trump.

Gabbard, who represented Hawaii as a Democrat in Congress from 2013 to 2021, has been, from the start, a polarizing and intensely conspiratorial figure and a curious choice for this role. She grew up in a spiritual movement in Hawaii called the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of Hare Krishna that some critics and ex-members have dubbed a cult. (A Gabbard spokesperson has said that such criticism is unfounded and amounts to “Hinduphobia.”) Each time she’s been considered for a more substantial role, and during her 2020 presidential campaign, observers have debated how her upbringing has influenced her beliefs.

Over her career, Gabbard has shown a special soft spot for the world’s autocrats: in 2017, she secretly met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, going on to say that she was “skeptical” that Assad had carried out a chemical gas attack on his own people. “There’s responsibility that goes around,” she vaguely observed to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, in response to a question about whether she believed Assad, in Blitzer’s words, “bears any responsibility for the horrific deaths that have occurred in his own country.” Assad is believed to have carried out “widespread and systematic” gas attacks against the Syrian people, according to Human Rights Watch. Gabbard was also harshly critical of Ukraine preceding Russia’s invasion of the country, claiming that the invasion could have been avoided if NATO and the Biden Administration had acknowledged what she called Russia’s........

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