Tulsi Gabbard (, born April 12, 1981) is an American politician of the Democratic Party serving as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district since 2013. She was also a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee until February 28, 2016, when she resigned to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. Elected in 2012, she is the first Samoan American and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress. She served in a field medical unit of the Hawaii Army National Guard in a combat zone in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and was deployed to Kuwait from 2008 to 2009.

Tulsi Gabbard was born on April 12, 1981, in Leloaloa, American Samoa, the fourth of five children. Her father, Mike Gabbard, is of American Samoan descent; his Samoan family moved to the United States and he became a naturalized citizen at age one. Her mother, Carol (Porter) Gabbard, was born in Decatur, Indiana. In 1983, when Gabbard was two years old, her family moved to Hawaii.  Gabbard has spoken about growing up as a mixed-race girl in a multicultural and multireligious household: her father is of Samoan and European ancestry and an active lector at his Catholic church, but also enjoys practicing mantra meditation, including kirtan. Her mother is of European descent and a practicing Hindu. Tulsi embraced Hinduism as a teenager.  Gabbard was home-schooled through high school except for two years at a girls-only missionary academy in the Philippines. She graduated from Hawaii Pacific University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration in 2009.  She returned from a deployment to Iraq in 2006 and worked for U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka, then volunteered for another deployment to the Middle East in 2009. After returning to Hawaii, she was elected to the Honolulu City Council, where she served from 2011 to 2012. In 2012, she ran for the open 2nd Congressional District seat and won the primary with 55% of the vote in an upset over former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann. She won the general election with 81% of the vote. In the House of Representatives, Gabbard serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. She is also a military police officer with the Hawaii Army National Guard.

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