On a Thursday in February 2026, President Donald Trump announced that he would direct the Pentagon and other government agencies to identify and release files related to extraterrestrial life and unidentified flying objects (UFOs) due to a growing public interest in the topic. His comments came shortly after former President Barack Obama suggested during a podcast that the reality of extraterrestrial life was statistically plausible, although he clarified that he had not seen any evidence of direct contact with aliens.
During a press conference aboard Air Force One, Trump expressed uncertainty regarding the existence of extraterrestrial beings, stating, "I don’t know if they’re real or not," while also noting that he could potentially help Obama by declassifying certain information. In a social media post later that night, Trump specified that he was instructing government agencies to release all information related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and UFOs, characterizing the subject as highly complex yet crucially important.
Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, hinted on a podcast that he was preparing to give a speech about aliens when the time was right. However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded humorously to this suggestion, stating that a speech on aliens would be news to her.
The public's fascination with UFOs surged after former Pentagon officials released Navy videos of unexplained aerial objects in 2017, culminating in Congress holding its first hearings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022. Officials from the hearings indicated that many of these objects, which appeared to be hovering over Navy ships, were likely drones. In response to increasing scrutiny, the Pentagon promised greater transparency regarding UFO encounters and created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in July 2022 to centralize military UFO reports.
By 2023, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, who led the AARO, confirmed that there was no evidence of any government program focused on the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology. Reports made public revealed that the vast majority of military UFO sightings remain unexplained, although the few that were identified tend to be harmless in nature.
A recent unclassified report submitted to Congress in June 2024 indicated that there had been 485 reports of unidentified phenomena made by service members over the past year. Of those, 118 cases were identified as "prosaic objects," such as balloons, birds, and unmanned aerial systems. Importantly, the report emphasized that AARO had found no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activities, or technologies to date.
The renewed interest in UFOs and the exploration of extraterritorial phenomena reflects a changing narrative within American governance and public discourse regarding the unknown. With Trump’s directive, the potential for new revelations and government transparency surrounding these enigmatic topics remains a focal point of discussion in American society.
