On March 18, 2026, the State Department added 12 countries — Cambodia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Grenada, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, and Tunisia — to its visa-bond program, requiring B-1/B-2 visitor-visa applicants from those nations to post a refundable bond of $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 as a condition of issuance, effective April 2, 2026. The addition brings the program to 50 countries, predominantly lower-income states; bonded travelers may enter only through commercial airports and are barred from land, sea, charter, and general-aviation ports of entry.
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.
