U.S. intelligence report drops election interference threats for first time since 2017

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment on March 18, 2026, omitting election interference as a named threat for the first time since 2017. Director Tulsi Gabbard removed the category despite intelligence community assessments that Russia and China continued to conduct influence operations targeting US elections. The omission broke a nine-year streak of the threat assessment explicitly naming foreign election interference, including in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.