Is UFO Disclosure a Partisan Issue? Why the Real Fight Is Constitutional
Danny Sheehan makes the case that support for UAP disclosure runs straight across the political spectrum — and that the real opposition comes not from either party but from the national security state inside the executive branch.
Recorded during Congress’s July recess, ahead of its return on the 13th, the episode centers on whether Senate Majority Leader John Thune will allow the Schumer–Rounds amendment into the National Defense Authorization Act for 2027. Sheehan explains what the amendment would do — stand up a nine-member review board, its appointments ratified by the Senate, to gather and review the government’s UAP holdings — and why NPI is not optimistic. Speaker Mike Johnson had already declined to grant Rep. Eric Burlison’s version of the amendment a rule to reach the House floor, and the executive branch has signaled it intends to appoint a governance board of its own.
The heart of the episode is a reframing. Sheehan sets two films circulating over the Fourth of July weekend against each other — Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, drawing record audiences, and Independence Day running on cable — as stand-ins for a cultural divide he argues does not actually exist on this issue. In Congress, he points out, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamie Raskin line up alongside Eric Burlison, Tim Burchett, and Anna Paulina Luna. The disagreement is not left against right. It is Congress and the public on one side, and the executive branch’s national security apparatus on the other.
From there he traces that apparatus to its origins, in his account: Robert Lovett — a Brown Brothers Harriman partner — writing to President Truman to urge the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and a founding purpose he describes as securing “continued privileged access to the strategic raw materials” abroad. Recorded in the 250th year of the Declaration of Independence, the episode closes on that parallel: Congress reclaiming its Article I authority over what gets classified, with NPI’s 58-page bill — drafted at the request of the House Oversight Committee’s task force on declassification — as the mechanism.
The real conflict is not in fact between the Republican and Democratic Party. The real conflict that’s taking place is between the national security state … within the federal executive branch, over and against the populist advocates in Congress and the people of the United States, who are all uniformly demanding full disclosure.
What’s discussed
2:21 Congress returns on the 13th — what is waiting for it
2:36 The Schumer–Rounds amendment to the 2027 defense authorization bill
3:02 A nine-person review board, and what it would be ordered to do
3:39 Three tranches released so far — “the outermost rings”
4:23 Forty-odd pages proposed for the new NDAA
4:45 Why NPI is not optimistic about Senate leadership
5:15 How Burlison’s amendment was kept off the House floor
5:50 The executive branch’s plan to appoint its own governance board
6:18 Two Fourth of July films, two narratives about contact
7:44 The cultural divide — and who it actually describes
10:04 Why that divide does not describe the UFO issue
10:42 Ocasio-Cortez and Raskin alongside Burlison, Burchett, and Luna
11:29 Naming the real conflict
12:35 A constitutional struggle, not a culture war
13:36 Where the national security state came from
14:24 Brown Brothers Harriman, Robert Lovett, and the letter to Truman
15:25 “Privileged access to the strategic raw materials”
16:19 Passing the technology to the private aerospace sector
17:49 Article I, Section 8, Clause 14
18:20 NPI’s 58-page bill and the Oversight declassification task force
19:07 The birthday gift the citizens are owed
19:53 What you can do now
Timestamps open the episode on YouTube at that moment.
Key passages
On why leadership may block it again
“We here at the New Paradigm Institute — and I think most of the citizens organizations that are involved in trying to compel full disclosure of the UFO information — are not at all optimistic that the Senate Majority Leader is going to do anything differently than Mike Johnson did.”
On support across the political spectrum
“You have on the one side Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamie Raskin, others within the more progressive caucus members of the United States Congress, as well as Eric Burlison from the seventh district in Missouri, Tim Burchett from the second district in Tennessee, Anna Paulina Luna from the 13th CD out of Florida — extremely conservative areas of the country — all completely in unison supporting this total demand for full disclosure.”
On who actually disagrees
“The real conflict that’s taking place is between the national security state here in the United States … within the federal executive branch, over and against the populist advocates in Congress and the citizens of the United States, who are all uniformly demanding full disclosure of the information about the UFOs.”
On what is being decided
“It’s a constitutional struggle between the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States who demand to be read in on the UFO secrets, so that we can participate in the democratic decision-making processes that are going to govern our relationship with the UFO people for the next 10,000 years.”
On the purpose of the national security state
“The entire purpose of setting up the national security state, in their own words, is to secure and maintain our continued privileged access to the strategic raw materials around the planet that would be needed by our major American corporations.”
On the anniversary
“This is the birthday gift to which the citizens of the United States are entitled from this Congress.”
Related from the Learning Library
Who Really Controls UFO Disclosure — Congress or the Executive Branch? — the previous episode, on the constitutional argument at the centre of this one.
The UAP Disclosure Timeline — the documented record behind the legislative fight described here.
Take Action — join Citizens for Disclosure and contact your representatives.
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.