Departures and Defences: Friday, May 22, 2026

America's intelligence chief walked into the Oval Office on Friday and did not walk out with the same job. The man Trump appointed to cut interest rates is being braced by markets for the opposite. Europe is quietly building the weapons America just cancelled. Cuba is ninety miles from Florida and hosting Russia's largest overseas listening post. And Ben Gurion Airport has become a US air base, with civilian planes squeezed off their own tarmac. Friday, May 22. Here is what happened.

Tulsi Gabbard Resigns as Director of National Intelligence to Care for Her Husband

Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence and one of the most visible members of President Trump's national security cabinet, resigned on Friday, informing Trump of her decision during a meeting in the Oval Office. Her last day at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will be June 30, 2026. The reason, confirmed by the White House and multiple senior administration officials, is personal: Gabbard's husband Abraham has been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer, and she said she must step away from public service to be by his side. In her formal resignation letter, obtained exclusively by Fox News, Gabbard wrote that she was deeply grateful for the trust Trump placed in her and for the opportunity to lead the ODNI for the last year and a half, and acknowledged that her husband faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months.

Gabbard was confirmed as the eighth Director of National Intelligence in February 2025, the first female combat veteran to hold the role. Her tenure was marked by sustained controversy: she repeatedly clashed with career intelligence officials over transparency and declassification, faced calls for her resignation from Democrats after releasing documents accusing the Obama administration of manufacturing Russia-related intelligence, and saw her chief of staff Joe Kent resign over the Iran war in March 2026. She is the latest member of Trump's original cabinet to depart, following the firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in early March and Attorney General Pam Bondi in early April. No immediate successor has been named. The ODNI oversees all seventeen agencies of the US intelligence community, and the vacancy at its top will require Senate confirmation of a replacement.

Trump Picked Warsh to Cut Rates. Markets Are Bracing for the Exact Opposite.

When President Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve, the political logic was clear: install a chair more sympathetic to rate cuts and ease financial conditions before the 2026 midterm elections. The economic logic, it is now becoming apparent, may not cooperate. Warsh officially took over from Jerome Powell on Thursday, and investors have moved swiftly to price out any near-term cuts. According to CME FedWatch data, markets are pricing a 97.2% probability of a hold at Warsh's first Federal Open Market Committee meeting in June, and are now assigning a higher probability to a rate hike before end-2027 than to a cut in 2026. Consumer Price Index inflation hit 3.8% annually in April, its highest in nearly three years. Producer prices accelerated at the fastest pace since 2022. The Iran war is keeping energy prices elevated, with the national gasoline average sitting at $4.56 per gallon.

Warsh has made no promises to the White House on rates. At his Senate confirmation hearing, he was explicit: he would use his own judgement and not take direction from the executive branch. He has previously argued that interest rates can be lower, and some economists, including Robin Brooks at Brookings, still expect him to cut 100 basis points before November. But the inflation data that has arrived since his confirmation has made that scenario increasingly difficult to justify without triggering a credibility crisis for the new Fed chair. The Motley Fool calculated that if the monthly CPI trend of the past six months continues, headline inflation could hit 5.2% by the November elections. At that level, any rate cut would be near-impossible to defend publicly. Trump has not publicly confronted Warsh since his confirmation, but the political pressure to lower rates before the midterms, and the economic pressure to hold or raise them, are moving in exactly opposite directions at the worst possible moment.

Washington Warns of Growing Russian and Chinese Intelligence Operations in Cuba

The Trump administration has escalated its public warnings about Russian and Chinese intelligence activities in Cuba, with CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveling to Havana in mid-May to deliver a direct ultimatum to Cuban officials: sever ties with US adversaries or face consequences. The warning centres on what US intelligence has assessed as Russia's largest overseas listening post, located on the island less than 100 miles from the Florida coastline, as well as Chinese signals intelligence facilities that have been operational since at least 2023. In an executive order earlier this year, Trump formally declared Cuba an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States, citing its hosting of Russian and Chinese intelligence infrastructure as the primary justification. Ratcliffe told Cuban officials during his Havana visit that the administration was offering a genuine opportunity for collaboration and economic stabilisation, but that the offer was contingent on Cuba severing all intelligence-related ties with Moscow and Beijing, and would not remain open indefinitely.

The broader context makes the warning more charged than previous iterations of the same argument. Cuba has reported that it has run out of fuel and is suffering near-total power blackouts, a consequence of both its collapsing economy and the disruption of Venezuelan oil supply since the US military operation that captured Nicolás Maduro in January 2026. The island's military and intelligence apparatus, however, continues to function. US intelligence has separately reported that Cuba has stockpiled approximately 300 military drones, largely sourced from Russia and Iran since 2023, and that there have been internal discussions about potential targets including locations in Key West, US naval vessels, and the US-controlled Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Calls for a US military intervention in Cuba have grown louder in some quarters of Washington, though analysts broadly agree that domestic political constraints, voter fatigue and the ongoing Iran conflict make such a step implausible in the near term.

France Moves to Join the UK-German Long-Range Missile Programme as Europe Stops Waiting for Washington

France has formally expressed its interest in joining the long-range precision strike programme developed by the United Kingdom and Germany under their 2024 Trinity House defence agreement, the Financial Times reported exclusively on Friday. The programme aims to develop a family of ground-launched missiles with ranges exceeding 2,000 kilometres, capable of striking military targets inside Russian territory. Trilateral talks between Paris, London and Berlin are expected to take place in early June. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius confirmed the French approach: now the French want to join us, and to do so as quickly as possible. The programme, which falls under the broader European Long-Range Strike Approach framework, envisions stealth cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons, with companies including MBDA and Hypersonica already involved, and France proposing ArianeGroup as a contributor of rocket booster technology.

The timing is inseparable from Washington's recent decisions. Trump's cancellation of a planned US deployment of a battalion equipped with Tomahawk missiles and other long-range weapons to a base in western Germany removed a significant component of Europe's forward deterrence posture and accelerated the pressure to develop indigenous alternatives. France's interest in joining the programme is also part of a broader shift in European strategic thinking: the assumption that the United States will provide the deep-strike capability that Europe lacks is no longer being treated as reliable. Britain and France have previous successful cooperation on the Storm Shadow and SCALP missile systems, providing a proven industrial template. There are tensions to navigate, including concerns in London about industrial balance and governance, and a history of Franco-German defence programme difficulties on projects like the FCAS fighter jet. But the strategic imperative, as one European official put it, has never been clearer.

Ben Gurion Airport Has Become a US Air Base — and Israel's Airlines Are Paying for It

Dozens of US military refuelling and cargo aircraft have been stationed at Ben Gurion Airport since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran in late February, and Israeli aviation officials are warning that the situation has reached a breaking point. At least 14 American KC-135 and KC-46 refuelling tankers have been parked on the airport's civilian tarmac, with additional US aircraft positioned at Ovda Airbase in southern Israel. The Civil Aviation Authority Director General Shmuel Zakay wrote to Transportation Minister Miri Regev warning that Ben Gurion is operating like a military base, not a civilian airport. Israir CEO Uri Sirkis told the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee that his airline, which normally parks 17 aircraft at Ben Gurion, has been reduced to four overnight parking spaces, forcing costly repositioning to airports outside the country and sharply limiting flight operations. The disruption is being passed directly to Israeli consumers in the form of higher airfares ahead of the peak summer travel season.

The US military aircraft are expected to remain at Ben Gurion through at least the end of 2027, according to Israeli media reports citing military sources. Foreign airlines, which had suspended operations to Tel Aviv when Israeli airspace was closed at the start of the conflict, have been slow to resume service, partly because of uncertainty over airspace status and partly because of the congestion created by the US military presence. Transportation Minister Regev has demanded the IDF chief of staff move the American aircraft from Ben Gurion to Ramon Airport and military bases within 14 days, but the request has not yet been actioned. The situation illustrates, with unusual visibility, how deeply the Iran war has restructured the region's physical infrastructure: what was designed as a civilian international hub has been partially absorbed into a forward operating posture for the US Air Force, with consequences that Israeli citizens are experiencing every time they book a summer flight.