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The next US President Donald Trump has picked Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence.

In a statement, Trump said that Tulsi would bring “a fearless spirit” to the intelligence agencies and secure “peace through strength.”

As the head of the US intelligence community, Gabbard will oversee 18 intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), and US Space Force’s intelligence agency.

Tulsi Gabbard has been active in American politics for the past two decades.

Born to Samoan parents, Gabbard became the youngest woman ever elected to a US state legislature at the age of 21 when she was elected to the Hawaii State Legislature. She is the daughter of Mike Gabbard, a Democratic state senator in Hawaii. In the 1970s, he became a devotee of Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa and adopted the Hindu religion.

Tulsi followed in her father’s footsteps and followed the Hindu faith too. She was the first Hindu to be elected to the US House of Representatives.

Before being elected to Congress, Tulsi served in the US military. She enlisted in the Hawaii Army National Guard in 2003 and was deployed to Iraq to support logistics. She later graduated from Alabama Military Academy and was deployed to Kuwait. She was recently deployed to the Horn of Africa as a civil affairs officer.

She took the oath of office when elected to Congress on a Bhagavad Gita, calling it her “spiritual lifeline”. She served in the House of Representatives for eight years.

During her tenure, she has expressed sympathy towards Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syria President Bashar-al-Assad. She had met the Syrian president on a secret trip in 2017 and declared that he wasn’t the enemy of the US.

She also ran a presidential campaign in 2020 and was running against Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders to become the Democratic Party nominee for the US president in 2020. However, she couldn’t find momentum and dropped out, supporting Biden.

Since her departure from the US Congress, she became a critic of the Democratic Party, eventually leaving it in 2022. She later joined the Republican Party and endorsed President Trump’s re-election bid.