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Power shift in Washington: what now for the UFO files?

5 min read

Democrats won majorities in both the House and the Senate in the November 3 midterm elections. But the new Congress won’t be seated until January 3, 2027. Until then, Republicans run the legislative agenda, and decisions on releasing government UAP records still rest with the Trump administration.

What changed with the election?

In the November 3 midterms, Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate, setting up divided government for the final two years of Donald Trump's presidency. Several major news organizations and networks called the results; the AP announced Democratic control of the Senate at 11:37 p.m. Eastern on election night.

The shift isn't immediate, though. The current Republican-led Congress serves until January 3, 2027, and Trump's term runs until January 20, 2029. That is why a Liberation Times analysis concludes that Trump still holds the cards on UFO disclosure: much of what disclosure advocates want released sits with the executive branch.

Where does the UAP Disclosure Act stand?

On July 22, 2026, the House adopted the UAP Disclosure Act (UAPDA) from Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican, as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2027. The full NDAA passed the House the same day, 216–212.

As passed by the House, the measure would, among other things:

require agencies to preserve UAP records and transfer them to the National Archives, including records held by contractors;
create an independent, nine-member review board, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, with subpoena power;
require every record to be made public within 25 years of its creation, unless the President certifies that the harm of release outweighs the public interest;
require a Controlled Disclosure Campaign Plan;
direct the federal government to take, through eminent domain, any recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence held by private parties, should such material exist.

The review board would operate until September 30, 2030, unless Congress extends it.

The bill's fate will now be decided in negotiations between the two chambers, and history is not encouraging. The Senate passed an earlier version in 2023, but the final FY2024 NDAA dropped the review board, the subpoena power and the eminent domain provision. Only the National Archives UAP collection survived. Renewed attempts in 2024 and 2025 also failed to become law. Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds reintroduced the measure on June 24 this year, but as of late September reports, it had not been added to the Senate's version of the NDAA.

What are Democrats planning?

The New York Post reported on October 31, before the election, that Democrats would form their own UFO caucus and a select committee if they won. That committee could replace the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets led by Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. The paper cited unnamed insiders, so the plan is not official.

The effort is led by Rep. André Carson, an Indiana Democrat who chaired the House's first public UAP hearing in 2022. Carson said the current administration has not been fully transparent on UAP and has slow-walked several disclosure requirements set by Congress. He called for the immediate release of an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) report on historical military and intelligence UAP investigations, but did not specify which document or which deadline he meant.

The "luring" briefing

One question Democrats could pursue is a classified briefing that Burlison has already discussed publicly. In an interview with Dr. Phil released on October 15, he said that in the fall of 2025 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was wrapping up a years-long investigation that had produced few answers, but he was later called back because things had changed.

According to Burlison, the new briefing concerned an event in late fall 2025, when personnel from ODNI, the CIA, the FBI and Department of War intelligence saw unusual objects at a military installation in the western United States. In a separate interview, he described an effort to create conditions that might attract UAP so they could be documented. An FBI interview record released in one of the PURSUE batches describes glowing orbs coming close to a helicopter carrying the intelligence team.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise confirmed in April that he attended a classified UAP briefing and saw "eye-opening" things there. He did not say whether that briefing concerned the same incident.

PURSUE releases continue

On May 8, 2026, the Department of War launched PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters), the system created at the President's direction to declassify and publish UAP records. The documents are available at war.gov/ufo. The seventh and most recent batch came out on October 23, and the department says work on the next one is underway.

According to Liberation Times, the open questions after the election are whether Republicans can get the disclosure act into the final NDAA in the closing weeks of this Congress, and how far Trump is willing to go on disclosure in his remaining two years.

The sober take

What is established: Democrats won both chambers, but take control only on January 3, 2027. The House passed the UAP Disclosure Act in July as part of the NDAA, and the Department of War has released seven PURSUE batches so far.

What is uncertain:

The bill is not final. In 2023, its strongest provisions (independent board, subpoena power, eminent domain) were stripped out precisely during House–Senate negotiations.
Reports of Democratic UFO committee plans rest on unnamed sources. A caucus and a select committee are two different things, and neither exists yet.
The new majority may have other investigative priorities, so it is not certain that UAP will move to the front of the line.

What is not proven:

Burlison's "luring" account is based on a classified briefing whose contents are not public. The released records describe an exercise and sightings but never state that the operation was meant to attract UAP, and the date and location details are heavily redacted.
Many PURSUE files are labeled "unresolved," but none has confirmed the existence of non-human intelligence.
The eminent domain provision is conditional ("should such material exist"), so the bill's wording is not evidence that recovered technology or biological material actually exists.

What to watch: the final House–Senate NDAA text, specifically whether the independent review board and subpoena power survive, and the next PURSUE release.