Gabbard, Tulsi, 1981-

Tulsi Gabbard (born April 12, 1981) is an American politician and United States Army Reserve officer. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Gabbard was the first Hindu member of Congress and also the first Samoan-American voting member of Congress.

Born in Leloaloa, American Samoa, her family moved to Hawaii when she was two years old. In 2002, while working as a self-employed martial arts instructor, Gabbard was the youngest legislator ever elected to represent the 42nd House district of the Hawaii House of Representatives. In April 2003, while serving in the Hawaii State Legislature, Gabbard enlisted in the Hawaii Army National Guard; she was deployed for a 12-month tour in Iraq in July 2004. In March 2007, she graduated from the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy. She was commissioned as a second lieutenant, and assigned to the 29th Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Hawaii Army National Guard, this time to serve as an Army Military Police officer. She was stationed in Kuwait from 2008 to 2009. Having dropped out of Leeward Community College in 2002 to run for the state legislature, Gabbard earned a B.S.B.A. from Hawaii Pacific University in 2009.

After returning home from her second deployment to the Middle East in 2009, Gabbard ran for a seat on the Honolulu City Council, winning in a runoff election. In early 2011, Mazie Hirono, the incumbent Democratic U.S. Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district, announced that she would run for the United States Senate. In May 2011, Gabbard announced her candidacy for Hirono's House seat. An underdog in the Democratic primary, Gabbard nonetheless won a comfortable victory, easily besting her Republican opponent that November.

In Congress, Gabbard supported a two-tier universal health care plan that she calls "Single Payer Plus". She supported strengthening Roe v. Wade by codifying it into federal law, and believes that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare", although she has said it is not a choice she would personally make. She co-sponsored the Family Act for paid family and medical leave and endorsed universal basic income. She opposes military interventionism, although she has called herself a "hawk" on terrorism. Her decision to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and her skeptical approach to two claims that he had used chemical weapons and decision to vote "present" when the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump were controversial.

Gabbard launched her presidential campaign in February 2019. On October 25, 2019, Gabbard announced that she would not seek reelection to the House in 2020. On March 3, 2020, Gabbard, who is of Samoan descent and 26% Southeast Asian, earned two delegates in American Samoa, making her the second woman of color (after Shirley Chisholm) and the first Asian-American and Pacific-Islander presidential candidate to earn primary delegates. On March 19, 2020, Gabbard dropped out of the 2020 election and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. In January 2021, Gabbard launched her own podcast: This is Tulsi Gabbard. She has also made several appearances on Fox News programs since leaving Congress, such as Tucker Carlson Tonight and The Ingraham Angle, where she criticized such figures as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, calling the latter a "domestic terrorist" for what she deemed as his attempt to "undermin[e] our constitution by trying to take away our civil liberties and rights" in the aftermath of the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol.