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      ACLU sues to block White House from sending 10 immigrants to Guantánamo

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      Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration Saturday to prevent it from transferring 10 undocumented immigrants detained in the US to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, their second legal challenge in less than a month over plans to hold up to 30,000 people there for deportation.The latest federal lawsuit so far applies only to 10 men facing transfer to the naval base in Cuba, and their attorneys said the administration will not notify them of who would be transferred or when. As with a lawsuit the same attorneys filed earlier this month for access to people already detained there, the latest case was filed in Washington and is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union.At least 50 people are known to have been transferred already to Guantánamo Bay, and the civil rights attorneys believe the number now may be about 200. They have said it is the first time in US history that the government has detained non-citizens on civil immigration charges there. For decades, the naval base was primarily used to detain foreigners associated with the 11 September 2001 attacks.Trump has said Guantánamo Bay, also known as “Gitmo”, has space for up to 30,000 people and that he plans to send “the worst” or high-risk “criminal aliens” there. The administration has not released specific information on who is being transferred, so it is not clear which crimes they are accused of committing in the US and whether they have been convicted, or merely charged or arrested.“The purpose of this second Guantánamo lawsuit is to prevent more people from being illegally sent to this notorious prison, where the conditions have now been revealed to be inhumane,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney and lead counsel on the case. “The lawsuit is not claiming they cannot be detained in US facilities, but only that they cannot be sent to Guantánamo.”The 10 men are from nations including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Venezuela, and their attorneys say they are neither high-risk criminals nor gang members. In a 29 January executive order expanding operations at Guantánamo Bay, Trump said that one of his goals was to “dismantle criminal cartels”.Their attorneys described their latest lawsuit as an emergency filing to halt imminent transfers and challenge the Trump administration’s plans. They contend that the transfers violate the men’s right to due legal process, guaranteed by the fifth amendment to the US constitutionThe latest lawsuit also argues that federal immigration law bars the transfer of non-Cuban migrants from the US to Guantánamo Bay and that the US government has no authority to hold people outside its territory, and that the naval base remains part of Cuba legally. The transfers are also described as arbitrary.The men’s attorneys allege that many of the people who have been sent to Guantánamo Bay do not have serious criminal records or even any criminal history. Their first lawsuit, filed 12 February, said people sent to the naval base had “effectively disappeared into a black box” and could not contact attorneys or family. The US Department of Homeland Security, one of the agencies sued, said they could reach attorneys by phone.In another, separate federal lawsuit filed in New Mexico, a federal judge on 9 February blocked the transfer of three immigrants from Venezuela being held in that state to Guantánamo Bay. Their attorneys said they had been falsely accused of being gang members.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe migrant detention center at Guantánamo operates separately from the US military’s detention center and courtrooms for foreigners detained under George W Bush during what Bush called the post-9/11 “war on terror”. It once held nearly 800 people, but the number has dwindled to 15, including accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, who was assigned to Guantánamo when he was on active duty, has called it a “perfect place” to house undocumented immigrants, and Trump has described the naval base as “a tough place to get out of”.A United Nations investigator who visited the military detention center in 2023 said conditions had improved, but that military detainees still faced near constant surveillance, forced removal from their cells and unjust use of restraints, resulting in “ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law”. The US said it disagreed “in significant respects” with her report. More

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      Cruelty and staggering financial costs: why expanding Guantánamo is a grave mistake | Karen J Greenberg and Mike Lehnert

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      Nine days into the country’s 47th presidency, Donald Trump issued an executive memorandum that contained his latest mass deportation plan. The three-paragraph, 148-word order called for a migrant facility located at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be expanded “to full capacity”. The US president later said the camp would house 30,000 migrants.Troop deployments quickly followed and on 4 February, the first planes carrying a few dozen migrants arrived at Guantánamo, with officials sending more each day.If the past is any guide, rather than accelerating Trump’s drive for unprecedented mass deportations, the Guantánamo migrant detention plan is destined to repeat the cruelty, confusion, protracted legal battles and staggering financial costs that have defined US detentions at Guantánamo since the September 11 attacks.Today we know Guantánamo mainly as the detention facility that held a total of 780 war on terror detainees over the past 23 years. The cruelty of Guantánamo has been exhaustively documented, notably in the 2023 UN special rapporteur’s report on the detention facility which described “the depth, severity, and evident nature of many detainees’ current physical and psychological harms”, both those still in Guantánamo and those who had been released as constituting human rights violations.Instead of acting as an effective deterrent, Guantánamo has become a worldwide symbol of US hypocrisy.View image in fullscreenThe US has also found it impossible to bring to trial those who are charged with conspiring in the attacks of September 11. In sum, once detention in Gitmo was set up, it has seemed doomed to perpetual limbo, all too easy to fill up and nearly impossible to empty.And the prison complex, which currently holds 15 prisoners, has served taxpayers poorly as well. It now operates at an astounding estimated cost of $44m – per prisoner per year – up from $13m in 2019 when the prison held 40 detainees. Every ounce of water used on the base must be created by a single desalinization plant. Food, construction material and all other supplies must be brought in by barge. Troops for security and logistics support must be deployed. Medical personnel as well.The war on terror’s prison is not the only warning sign from the past. For decades before September 11, Guantánamo served as a warehouse for migrants, a zone where laws were conveniently pushed aside, and legal resolution remained elusive.Originally established as a coaling station in 1903, the island military base took on a new role in the 1990s when Cubans, and then Haitians fleeing the overthrow of the democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, were apprehended at sea while seeking asylum in the United States.Culminating in Operation Sea Signal, 50,000 migrants were detained over time, with 24,000 in place at the peak, housed in vast expanses of tent cities where conditions were dangerously unsanitary, legal processes slow to nonexistent, and treatment of the migrants reportedly harsh. Despite the Clinton administration’s promises of processing their cases for asylum, most of the Haitians were summarily returned to Haiti. Cubans as well often remained in legal limbo in one “sad camp” or another.Since then, the Migrant Operations Center (MOC) has continued to serve as a holding facility for migrants apprehended at sea. In 2020-2021, the MOC held an average of 14 detainees at a time. By 2024, 37 migrants were housed there, reportedly living in legal limbo, under unsanitary conditions and reported mistreatment and abuse.View image in fullscreenThe sense of deja vu is unsettling. Tom Homan has referred to those who will be sent to Guantánamo as “the worst of the worst”, the same words used by the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, when he first set up the post-9/11 prison camp. Tellingly, the first troops sent last week to facilitate the new operations were marines from Camp LeJeune, just as they had been after September 11. And the essential policy parallel holds as well: an administration has given up trying to tackle complex policy problems and has instead embraced viral images of shackled prisoners and tough-talking soundbites that energize its political base.Guantánamo makes a mockery of our claim that we are a nation of laws, prudence and common sense. It has become a global symbol of the US inability to address complex challenges, in this case the unprecedented level of mass migration under way worldwide, with an eye towards a realistic, long-term solution. Nor is there a compelling argument that the threat of detention at Guantánamo will deter those seeking asylum from fears of persecution in their home countries and are willing to risk the dangers of the migration routes.In a 1996 after-action manual based on interviews with military personnel who had served at Guantánamo during the detention operation of the 1990s, the authors made a series of recommendations. The manual highlighted the need to clarify the “legal basis for the operation” and “for understanding the nature and scope of the mission at the outset”.Such clarity, Gen Joseph Hoar, the head of USCentcom at the time wrote, was “paramount”.The general’s warning was ignored after September 11. It is absent today as well in the rapid, indiscriminate, legally vague and underprepared operation currently under way.It’s time to finally take a lesson from the past. The throughline of Guantánamo represents one thing and one thing only: it exists outside the law. It is ineffective, exorbitantly expensive, and will not solve complex, insufficiently addressed policy messes. Using it to tackle migration will lead predictably not to solving a problem but to creating new ones.

      Karen J Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days

      Mike Lehnert (MajGen USMC ret) served as the joint task group commander of the Cuban and Haitian migrant camps during Operation Sea Signal (1995) and the first joint task force commander of JTF GITMO (2002) More

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      ‘A human rights disaster’: immigrants sent into Guantánamo black hole despite no proof of crime

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      Handcuffed and shackled, the men appear in government propaganda photos being herded towards military cargo planes that will carry them to an uncertain future in an infamous land.“These individuals are the worst of the worst that we have pulled off of our streets,” Donald Trump’s homeland security chief, Kristi Noem, thundered against the supposedly “criminal alien murderers, rapists, child predators and gangsters” being packed off to Guantánamo Bay.In interviews and on social media, Noem alleged those being sent to the notorious US naval base in Cuba included South American “child pedophiles”, drug traffickers and “vicious gang members” guilty of “heinous crimes”.But 10 days after the Trump administration began sending immigrants to Guantánamo, authorities have yet to provide proof of those claims as mystery continues to surround their identities and doubts grow over whether many have committed any crime at all.“It sounds like this picture the government is painting of them being people who are dangerous and violent is patently false,” said Jessica Vosburgh, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is part of a coalition of rights groups that this week sued the Trump administration for access to the Guantánamo detainees. “It’s clear the folks who we suspect have been sent to Guantánamo are not, on the whole, dangerous people,” Vosburgh added, even if people in immigration detention “may have a mix of criminal backgrounds”.View image in fullscreenJ Wells Dixon, a lawyer with nearly two decades’ experience working with prisoners in a place critics call “America’s gulag”, said: “It is almost impossible to know exactly what is happening at Guantánamo at this moment. I’m not sure the Trump administration really understands what is happening.”The pictures US authorities have released of people they call “highly dangerous criminal aliens” have inadvertently shed some light on the identity of Trump’s Guantánamo internees.According to the website Migrant Insider, relatives identified one member of the first 10-member group flown to Guantánamo on 4 February as Luis Alberto Castillo Rivera. The 23-year-old Venezuelan was detained seeking asylum on the southern border on 19 January, one day before Trump took power vowing to return “millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came”. “He’s innocent,” Castillo’s sister, Yajaira Castillo, told the Spanish news agency EFE, denying her brother was part of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang.A second man spotted in the photos is Tilso Ramón Gómez Lugo, 37, a car mechanic from north-west Venezuela who had been sent to an immigration detention facility in Texas after being picked up on the border in April 2024. “I’ve known him since he was a child. He’s an educated boy who has no problems with anyone. He is someone with good parents, a hard worker and a good family – and very well-liked in the town we are from,” a friend, who asked not to be named, told the Guardian.“Trump had and has my support – but I do not agree with these extreme measures, especially against our compatriots,” added the friend, who like many fellow Venezuelans backed Trump believing he would take a hard-line stance on their home country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro.A third detainee is reportedly 25-year-old Yoiker David Sequera, a Venezuelan barber who was reportedly picked up by border agents last September after making the perilous journey through the Darién jungles between Colombia and Panama to reach the US. “My son is no criminal,” one relative, who suspected Sequera had been targeted because of his tattoos, told Migrant Insider.For the most part, however, the life stories of the immigrants remain an enigma.View image in fullscreen“The US government has shared close to nothing … they’re being completely evasive with sharing names,” said Vosburgh, whose conversations with other detainees and relatives of those suspected to be in Guantánamo led her to believe that Noem’s descriptions of the detainees as “vicious” criminals were “bald-faced lies”.A senior Department of Homeland Security official said all of those sent to Guantánamo had “committed a crime by entering the United States illegally”. “In addition to holding violent gang members and other high-threat illegal aliens, Guantánamo Bay is also holding other illegal aliens with final deportation orders. Every single alien at Guantánamo Bay has a final deportation order,” the official added, without offering evidence that any of the detainees had links to gangs or crime.The official declined to disclose precisely how many detainees were being held at Guantánamo but said it was “less than 100”. “In total, there have been eight flights in eight days,” the official added on Wednesday. On Thursday the New York Times said 98 men had been sent to the island base by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) between 4 and 11 February.“We don’t know who these individuals are yet. In that sense, it is reminiscent of Guantánamo’s past,” said Dixon, recalling the base’s post-9/11 conversion into a prison for “enemy combatants” captured in the “war on terror”.“People may forget [that] after Guantánamo opened in early 2002, it took quite a long time to learn who was detained [there], why they were there and what had happened to them. That information only started to become public when lawyers like me started traveling to Guantánamo to meet these individuals.”Back then, US authorities also called those held at Guantánamo “the worst of the worst”, recalled Dixon.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The reality was something very different. The reality was that you had people like the Uyghurs [Turkic Muslims] who had fled persecution in China and were rounded up in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan … and ended up in Guantánamo … The reality was something very different from the propaganda – and I think that’s undoubtedly what you’re going to see here.”Lee Gelernt, a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union, said all of the detainees were thought to be Venezuelan men. “But until we’re down there, we can’t be sure. And the government’s … threatening to send thousands [of people, so] I suspect at some point it’ll move beyond Venezuelans,” he added.If the identities of the Guantánamo detainees remain cloaked in secrecy, activists say there is little doubt over the conditions that await them at an isolated island base that has become synonymous with human rights abuses and torture.Fifty-three of the 98 detainees have reportedly been sent to a medium- to high-security military prison called Camp 6. It has previously been used to house “war on terror” prisoners, in some cases for years. The other 45 people are being held in “a lower-security building” on the other side of the base and being guarded by members of the US Coast Guard, according to the New York Times.A 2007 Amnesty International report painted a dire picture of life inside Camp 6, which was originally built to house 178 detainees. The US government claimed the facility combined “humane treatment with security needs” but activists called conditions there “unacceptably harsh”.The cells had no access to natural light or air and were lit by fluorescent lighting 24 hours a day, Amnesty said. Detainees “consistently complained of being too cold in the steel cells” as a result of air conditioning controlled by guards.Five Uyghur prisoners cited in the report told lawyers Camp 6’s strict regime left them feeling “despair, crushing loneliness, and abandonment by the world”. One previously smiley, “gentle and pleasant” man now “appeared to be in despair” and said he was “beginning to hear voices”.Dixon said it was possible detainees could be held in isolation for 22 hours each day.Yael Schacher, the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, said the Guantánamo detainees had fallen into “a legal black hole”.“You can’t call your relatives and you can’t get contact with your lawyers. So it’s really, really isolated. It’s basically just like warehousing away people without recourse … and the inability to contact the outside world is intense,” she said, calling for an end to Trump’s transfers.Schacher believes the Guantánamo transfers were designed to please Trump’s base. “It’s political theater … cruelty theater … harsh-on-immigrants theater,” she added.“All we really know is that the Trump administration is trying to evoke the terrible images of Guantánamo in order to appear tough on illegal immigration in the United States. That’s what this is about,” said Dixon. “This is not about law or policy … It’s a catastrophic human rights disaster.”Additional reporting by Clavel Rangel More

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      in Elections

      Desi Arnaz Historical Marker Celebrates the ‘I Love Lucy’ Star in Miami Beach

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      A new historical marker in Miami Beach pays tribute to his younger years, before Hollywood, when as a Cuban émigré he performed at a nightclub.Years before he played the charming and devoted husband Ricky Ricardo on the sitcom “I Love Lucy” and became a bandleader who belted out “Babalú” before audiences, Desi Arnaz was a teenage Cuban immigrant who struggled to learn English in Florida.He attended a Catholic school in Miami Beach, picking up the guitar and the conga drum. And he was eventually hired as a bandleader at a nightclub where he popularized the conga.Nearly 90 years after that first big break, Miami Beach honored him on Tuesday with a historical marker that was placed near where the nightclub stood. The marker pays tribute to his younger years in the city and celebrates him for paving the way for generations of Latino entertainers.“He was not only a pioneer for Cubans that were coming to the United States but he was a pioneer for the arts in Miami Beach,” said Alex Fernandez, a member of the Miami Beach Commission, the city’s legislative body.Desi, ‘an American Original’Desi Arnaz during a publicity tour to Lucille Ball’s hometown in Jamestown, N.Y., in 1956.Charlotte BrooksThe new marker is at Collins Park outside the Miami City Ballet. It is near the site of the former Park Avenue Restaurant that hosted performances and came to be remembered as the Park Avenue nightclub. The memorial joins an artsy Miami Beach district that includes the Bass Museum of Art and a library.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      A ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Musical Will Open on Broadway Next Year

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      The show, which had a previous run at Atlantic Theater Company, is scheduled to begin previews in February at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Twenty-seven years ago, “Buena Vista Social Club,” an album of prerevolutionary Cuban music that became an unexpected best seller, was released, spawning tours and documentary films and a burst of interest in the Afro-Cuban sound.Now a stage musical inspired by the making of the album is heading for Broadway.“Buena Vista Social Club” is scheduled to begin previews Feb. 21 and to open March 19 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Set primarily in Havana, the show depicts a group of aging and often overlooked musicians gathering in a recording studio, and recalling the tumultuous era decades earlier when they were young and the Cuban Revolution was gaining steam. The narrative loosely tracks with the history of the album, but contains songs that were released separately and elements that are fictionalized.The show had an Off Broadway run, at Atlantic Theater Company, that opened in late 2023; Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, described it as “full-of-riches,” praising the song and dance elements but expressing concerns about some of the storytelling. The Broadway cast will include many of the same performers and musicians as the Off Broadway production.The songs are all attributed to the Buena Vista Social Club, and the show has a book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”). The director is Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”) and the choreographers are the married couple Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.The musical is being capitalized for $17 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The lead producers are Orin Wolf, John Styles and Barbara Broccoli, who previously worked together on “The Band’s Visit.” Among the co-producers are the comedian-actor John Leguizamo; Luis Miranda, a founder of the Hispanic Federation and the father of Lin-Manuel Miranda; and LaChanze, the Tony-winning actress. More

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      Parts of Florida Under State of Emergency as Storm Moves Toward the Gulf

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      The storm, which could become Tropical Storm Debby, is expected to bring significant amounts of rain to the coast.The governor of Florida declared a state of emergency on Thursday as a tropical system moved toward the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to bring heavy rain, gusty winds and the potential for flash flooding.Known currently as Invest 97L, the storm could become Debby if it organizes itself into an official tropical storm. (“Invest” is meteorological shorthand for “investigative area.”)The U.S. National Weather Service warned that heavy rains could cause areas of flash flooding across Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas through the weekend.Florida braces for what could be a ‘major disaster.’With heavy rainfall of at least 12 inches expected over the next seven days, Florida is bracing for the threat of flooding, along with gusty winds and erosion. On Thursday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in more than 50 counties, which gives emergency managers the authority to allocate resources to respond to the fallout of the extreme weather.

      Five-day precipitation forecast

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      Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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      By Zach Levitt, Bea Malsky, Martín González Gómez and Madison Dong

      The order covers Orange County and Osceola County, and travel could be disrupted for the throngs of summer visitors who go to Orlando and the theme parks at Universal Studios Florida and Walt Disney World.Water tables in some areas are already saturated, the governor said, and the incoming rainfall “will cause significant river flooding that may last for several weeks.” The storm could damage “major interstates and roadways, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals, power grids and other critical infrastructure,” Mr. DeSantis said. It was expected to also cause widespread power outages from downed trees and power lines.The National Hurricane Center said that an aircraft would investigate the storm on Friday if needed, and it warned officials in Cuba and the Bahamas to monitor its progress.Specialists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, which falls under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tracking Hurricane Beryl in July.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wayne S. Smith, a Leading Critic of the Embargo on Cuba, Dies at 91

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      A former State Department official, he resigned in protest in 1982 over Cuba policy, then spent decades trying to rebuild relations with the island nation.Wayne S. Smith, a veteran Cuba expert at the State Department who, after resigning in protest over America’s embargo against the island nation in 1982, spent nearly four decades leading efforts to rebuild relations between Washington and Havana, died on June 28 at his home in New Orleans. He was 91.His daughter, Melinda Smith Ulloa, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.For more than 24 years after he joined the Foreign Service in 1958, Mr. Smith was America’s man in Havana, whether he was physically in the Cuban capital or dealing with it from a desk in Washington.Later, after leaving the State Department, he used his extensive experience to carry out a sustained campaign against America’s strategy of isolating Cuba, while also leading private and congressional delegations to the island in an attempt to build avenues of dialogue.“He was one of the foremost spokespeople in favor of normalizing relations,” William LeoGrande, an expert on Cuba affairs at American University in Washington, said in an interview.A witty and nimble writer, Mr. Smith turned out scores of opinion pieces, journal essays and books, including a memoir-cum-history, “The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957,” published in 1987.“Cuba seems to have the same effect on U.S. administrations,” he liked to say, “as the full moon once had on werewolves.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Russian and Chinese Interference Could Affect the 2024 Election

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      The stakes for Russia in the presidential vote are large. Other adversaries also might try to deepen divisions among American voters.The U.S. government is preparing for its adversaries to intensify efforts to influence American voters next year. Russia has huge stakes in the presidential election. China seems poised to back a more aggressive campaign. Other countries, like Iran, might again try to sow division in the United States.As Washington looks ahead to the 2024 vote, U.S. intelligence agencies last week released a report on the 2022 midterm elections — a document that gives us some hints about what might be to come.Spy agencies concluded Russia favored Trump in 2016. What about in 2024?Russia appears to be paying close attention to the election, as its war in Ukraine is soon to enter a third year.Former President Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate, has expressed skepticism about Ukraine funding. President Biden has argued that assisting Ukraine is in America’s interest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More