The Lame-Duck Window
Congress has left Washington with the defense bill unfinished, which means the fate of UAP disclosure this year will be decided in the short lame-duck session between the November election and the end of December.
The Senate has left Washington for the campaign season without passing its version of the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act. Its bill, S. 4784, stalled in July when a vote to begin debate fell short, 50 to 46, over the budget topline and funding for the war with Iran, a fight that has nothing to do with UAP. The House passed its own version, H.R. 8800, on July 22, and that bill carries Rep. Eric Burlison’s amendment to create a congressionally authorized review board for UAP records. With no Senate bill on the floor, the Senate’s UAP Disclosure Act, the Schumer–Rounds language first passed in 2023, has had no vehicle. The expected path now is a compromise text negotiated by the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees after the November 3 election, and Sheehan argues that is where the Burlison language will either survive or be stripped out.
On what has been released so far, his assessment is blunt. The Department of War has now published six tranches of records at war.gov/UFO, the most recent on September 18. In his reading, none of them acknowledges possession of a craft or of recovered bodies, or any communication with non-human intelligence. Rep. Tim Burchett has said publicly that unelected officials are keeping the files from the president himself. Sheehan’s answer is a legal one: the president can order any official in the executive branch to produce the records, the Justice Department can take refusals to a grand jury, and the House Oversight Committee can issue subpoenas at any time. None of them, he argues, has yet done everything it can. He also points to Jay Stratton, who helped create the Pentagon’s AAWSAP program and later led the UAP Task Force. Stratton’s memoir, Out of the Shadows, is due from HarperCollins on October 13. Stratton said in the 2025 documentary The Age of Disclosure that he had seen non-human craft and non-human beings firsthand, and Sheehan expects the book to add pressure on Congress in its final weeks.
The rest of the episode is a call list. Sheehan’s ask is to reach the members who will shape the final bill before Congress returns. In the Senate, that means the leaders of the two committees that write the defense and intelligence authorizations: Tom Cotton and Mark Warner of the Intelligence Committee, and Roger Wicker and Jack Reed of Armed Services. He also singles out senators who sit on both committees: Cotton, Mike Rounds (co-author of the UAP Disclosure Act), Ted Budd, Angus King, Kirsten Gillibrand and Mark Kelly, along with Wicker and Reed, who serve on Intelligence as ex officio members. On the House side, he names Intelligence Committee chair Rick Crawford and Armed Services chair Mike Rogers. The request is the same for each: keep the House-passed Burlison provision in the final bill. And if you don’t live in one of those states, he asks you to call the people you know who do.
Sources: Senate Democrats block NDAA (Breaking Defense) · FY2027 NDAA: Status of Legislative Activity (CRS) · Sixth release of UAP files (Department of War) · Burchett on the UFO files (Cybernews) · Stratton’s book (Mystery Wire) · Senate Intelligence Committee · Senate Armed Services Committee
What we’re focused on is getting the UAP or UFO Disclosure Act passed into law so that we can have a committee in place, operational under the oversight of the Congress of the United States making the determination as to the pace of disclosure and the scope of disclosure.
What’s discussed
Twenty-three chapters, timestamped to the episode. Each one opens the video at that moment.
0:00 Episode Teaser
0:44 Intro
2:04 The Senate’s Last Week Before the Recess
2:44 Why the NDAA Is Stalled
4:39 The Senate’s UAP Disclosure Act Is Blocked
4:58 The House NDAA and the Burlison Amendment
5:39 The Lame-Duck Window
6:53 Who Controls Disclosure Inside the White House
7:20 “No Beef”: What the Releases Leave Out
8:12 The “Deep State” Explanation
8:38 What the White House and Congress Could Do
9:31 Will Congress Demand the Files?
10:00 Jay Stratton’s Book, Out October 13
11:26 An Update on Rep. Burlison
12:09 Congress After January
15:43 What You Can Do Now
16:32 Senate Intelligence: Cotton and Warner
17:52 Senate Armed Services: Wicker and Reed
19:03 The House Side: Crawford and Rogers
20:05 Senators on Both Committees
24:56 The Full Call List
25:41 Why Now
26:39 Outro and How to Take Action
Key passages
On where the decision gets made
“…this is where the decision is going to get made as to whether or not there is going to be inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act a demand on the part of Congress to have a congressionally approved records review board, a UFO records review board established by the United States Congress.”
On what the releases leave out
“So, there’s basically no beef. There’s no beef in any of these revelations to date.”
On what the White House could do
“The White House has the authority to order any of those people into the White House and order them to turn this information over.”
On Congress
“And Congress up to this point has refrained from doing everything that it can do to get this information.”
On who decides
“…it is the members of the House and the Senate who are on the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee that are the ones that really are going to in effect make the decisions about the National Defense Authorization Act.”
On timing
“The time is now that we can’t keep putting this off any longer. If you haven’t made these calls yet, do so now.”
Related from the Learning Library
Should the White House Control UFO Disclosure? · episode 12, on the two rival plans for who decides what gets released
Who Decides What UAP Records Get Released? · episode 4, on the Burlison amendment and the review board it would create
What Was the Pentagon’s Secret UFO Program Looking For? · episode 13, on the AAWSAP charter in the sixth release
If AARO Exists, Why Does UFO Disclosure Need a New Law? · what the Pentagon’s UAP office can and cannot do
Tell the Senate to pass the UAPDA · contact your senators about the UAP Disclosure Act
Join Citizens for Disclosure · NPI’s volunteer network, with local and state chapters
Write Directly to Congress
The Congressional Disclosure Actions campaign tracks legislative efforts to compel transparency from the U.S. government on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Here, we focus on actions citizens can take to influence elected officials — from supporting UAP legislation to contacting your representative and attending hearings. This is the movement's policy pressure point, and your voice matters.