The Standing

A daily, non-partisan record of US democratic norms — and the events that erode them.

    Gabbard's 2026 threat assessment drops climate and foreign election-interference analysis

    On March 18, 2026, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released the Intelligence Community's 2026 Annual Threat Assessment and testified to the Senate and House intelligence committees. The assessment omitted the climate-and-environment analysis prior editions had carried — after Gabbard gutted the National Intelligence Council office covering those issues — and Gabbard told lawmakers the IC found no evidence of foreign threats to the November 2026 midterms, a departure from the community's prior findings on Russian and other election interference. Critics charged that the IC's flagship analytic product was being shaped to fit White House messaging.

    Jurisdiction
    federal
    Location
    Washington, D.C.

    Abuses documented

    Actors

    • Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
    • Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)

    Why we recorded this

    The Annual Threat Assessment is the intelligence community's flagship public product: a non-partisan account of the dangers facing the country, meant to inform Congress and the public regardless of who is in power. A healthy democracy depends on that analysis being shaped by evidence rather than by the sitting administration's political preferences. Here the Director of National Intelligence dropped an entire category of analysis after dismantling the office that produced it, and publicly asserted there was no foreign threat to the coming midterm elections — a reversal of the community's prior consensus on adversary interference. Recording it tracks how an institution built to give decision-makers unvarnished facts can be bent toward a preferred political message, and how that erosion removes information the public needs to govern itself.

    Sources

    1. DNI Gabbard Releases 2026 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community — Office of the Director of National Intelligence primary accessed June 11, 2026
    2. What's in the U.S. Intelligence Community's 2026 Global Threat Assessment? — Foreign Policy primary accessed June 11, 2026
    3. DNI's threat assessment omits foreign election interference — Defense One investigative accessed June 11, 2026
    4. US Intelligence Community's 2026 Annual Threat Assessment Ignores Climate Change — Council on Strategic Risks investigative accessed June 11, 2026

    See also