This behaviour is new and I doubt, that it is intended reading #525450 and #575184.

If I have a tab open pointing to, say

/usr/local/src

and I open a new tab, it points to /usr/local/src, independent from any program running in this tab (say e.g. `man'). This is how g-t used to work up to 2.24. But now, if I have a tab pointing to this location and I e.g. view a manual page in this tab, the new tab points to /usr/share/man, not to the directory the first tab points to. It's not just man. Having a root session with su in the current tab lets the new tab open in /.

I checked the profile preferences but didn't find something related. If this is intended behavior, please allow to behave like g-t did in the past: open new tabs pointing to the location the current tab points to.