President Donald Trump ordered Secretary of War Pete Hegseth late Thursday night to begin identifying and releasing government files related to extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and UFOs. The directive, posted on Truth Social, covers every department and agency with relevant records.
Trump framed the move as a response to public demand:
"Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War and other relevant Departments and Agencies to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters."
The Pentagon signaled compliance. Chief spokesman Sean Parnell told Fox News Digital that the Department "looks forward to working with the interagency to fulfill the President's directive."
The timeline for release and the breadth of materials that could become public remain unclear.
The order hands Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer something he has openly pursued for years, Fox News noted. Schumer has prodded Trump on the issue since last year, and when Trump ordered the declassification of files related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., Schumer's response was blunt: "Now do UFOs."
Schumer's interest is not new. In 2023, while serving as Senate majority leader under former President Joe Biden, he and Sen. Mike Rounds introduced legislation modeled after the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The bill would have created a review board at the National Archives and Records Administration and established a presumption of disclosure for UFO-related records.
It didn't survive intact. A more watered-down iteration of the bill became law, and Schumer blasted it as an "outrage," arguing that it left declassification in the wrong hands:
"It means that declassification of UAP records will be largely up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades."
That's a fair complaint, and one that conservatives should take seriously. The national security bureaucracy has a long and well-documented habit of using classification not to protect sources and methods, but to protect itself from embarrassment and accountability. Whether the subject is UFOs, surveillance programs, or intelligence failures, the instinct is always the same: stamp it classified and wait for everyone to lose interest.
The push for UFO transparency stretches back further than Schumer. The late former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid played a key role in funding the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in the late 2000s. The program received millions to investigate unexplained phenomena. Several years later, Schumer picked up where his predecessor left off.
Even former President Barack Obama waded in briefly, reportedly suggesting on a podcast that there was alien life before walking it back shortly after. Trump was reportedly spurred in part by those comments.
What's notable is how bipartisan the transparency push has been, and how bipartisan the resistance to it has been. The Pentagon, the intelligence community, and the broader national security apparatus have slow-walked, redacted, and stonewalled regardless of which party held the White House. That pattern should concern anyone who believes the government answers to the public rather than the other way around.
This order fits a broader pattern from the Trump administration. The declassification of the Kennedy, RFK, and MLK assassination files signaled an appetite for prying open the vaults that Washington has kept sealed for decades. The UFO directive extends that logic into territory that might sound eccentric but touches on a serious question: What has the federal government spent taxpayer money investigating, and why won't it tell the public what it found?
You don't have to believe in little green men to believe the American people deserve to see what their government has been hiding. Billions flow through defense and intelligence programs with virtually no public scrutiny. If there are files, the public paid for them. If there's nothing, releasing the records costs nothing. If there's something, the argument for secrecy grows weaker with every year that passes.
Schumer and Trump agreeing on anything is rare enough to be newsworthy on its own. That they agree the permanent bureaucracy has obstructed disclosure for decades should tell you something about the bureaucracy.
The files exist. The order has been given. Now the question is whether the agencies that have guarded these records for generations will comply with the President or find new ways to stall. Washington has a long memory for secrecy and a short one for accountability.
