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Tulsi Gabbard resigned as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence on Friday, saying she needed to leave the post so she could support her husband as he battles cancer. In a resignation letter she posted on social media, Gabbard said she told Trump she would step away as her role overseeing coordination among 18 intelligence agencies ends on June 30.

In the letter, Gabbard said her husband had recently been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and “faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months.” She wrote: “At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” according to the letter reported earlier by Fox News.

Trump responded in a social media post in which he said “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her.” The president also said her principal deputy, Aaron Lukas, would serve as acting director of national intelligence.

Gabbard’s resignation comes after a series of other Trump second-term cabinet departures. The AP report said the president previously ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in late March and that attorney general Pam Bondi left in response to growing frustration over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. It also said labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned in April after being the target of misconduct investigations.

The leadership change is likely to draw attention in Washington because Gabbard’s tenure included public friction with the administration over the Iran conflict. While Gabbard framed her departure as personal, the AP report described how her long-held, anti-interventionism stance had appeared to put her at odds with Trump’s overseas military operations.

The report said Iran contributed to the early tensions between Gabbard and Trump after the president tapped her to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to improve coordination among U.S. intelligence agencies. Shortly after taking the job and before the year’s war, Gabbard testified that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons, according to the AP account; after Trump launched attacks on Iranian nuclear sites last June, he disputed that position.

In congressional testimony in March, lawmakers pressed for Gabbard’s view on the threat from Iran as the top intelligence official. The AP report said she repeatedly emphasized that it was Trump’s decision to strike rather than hers, and included her statement: “It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat.”

The AP report also pointed to written remarks Gabbard provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee in which she said there had been no effort by Iran to rebuild its nuclear capability after U.S. attacks last year “obliterated” its nuclear program. The AP report said that position contradicted Trump, who has repeatedly asserted that the war was necessary to head off an imminent threat from the Islamic Republic.

As acting director, Lukas would take over after Gabbard’s June 30 departure, the AP report said. It described Lukas as having been an intelligence aide to Ric Grenell, then acting director of national intelligence, during Trump’s first term in 2020, and said Lukas previously worked as a former policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Gabbard, who was 44 when she resigned, was also described by the AP as a military veteran who lacked prior intelligence experience when Trump appointed her to run the national intelligence apparatus. She previously ran for president in 2020 and built a political career on opposition to foreign wars, later leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent before campaigning for some Republicans and ultimately endorsing Trump, the AP report said.