Who Really Controls UFO Disclosure — Congress or the Executive Branch?
Article I, Section 8, Clause 14 explicitly states that Congress has been granted the authority under the Constitution to set all of the rules and regulations for the armed forces of the United States government. So the executive branch doesn't have the authority to make decisions about what's going to be classified or declassified. It's the Congress of the United States that has that authority.
Danny Sheehan reports from Washington on a week that delivered both a breakthrough and a setback for UAP transparency — a landmark forum inside the Senate's Kennedy Caucus Room, and a disclosure bill kept off the House floor.
Disclosure Forum 2026 convened in the Kennedy Caucus Room — the room that held the Watergate and Iran-Contra hearings. On the same days, House leadership kept the UAP Disclosure Act from reaching a floor vote as an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, while senators moved to attach it on their side instead.
Sheehan's central argument is constitutional rather than speculative. Article I, Section 8, Clause 14 grants Congress the power to make rules governing the armed forces. On that reading, decisions about what the government classifies or releases belong to the elected branch — not to a review board staffed entirely by executive-branch appointees who serve at the president's pleasure. The distinction matters, he argues, because a board that can be dismissed at will is structurally unable to compel disclosure of anything its appointing authority prefers to withhold.
The episode's second half turns somewhere less expected. Alongside the forum, Sheehan met with interfaith leaders in Washington about what contact would mean for religious institutions. Drawing on Crane Brinton's final Harvard lecture and on writings from Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian traditions, he makes the case that disclosure is not only a legal and political project but a civilizational one — and that the institutions best placed to help people absorb it have barely begun the conversation.
What's discussed
1:27 A big week in Washington — the good news and the bad
2:43 Disclosure Forum 2026 convenes in the Kennedy Caucus Room
3:20 The UAP Disclosure Act as a defense-bill amendment — and why it never reached the floor
4:20 Rounds and Schumer take it to the Senate side
5:17 The governance board: who actually decides what gets released
8:03 Elizondo, Grusch, and the limits of authorized disclosure
9:22 Combat officers assigned to AARO, and “interdiction” in near space
10:38 Article I, Section 8, Clause 14 — Congress's constitutional authority
13:14 The National Security Act of 1947 and the national security state
14:35 The 1992 Defense Planning Guidance and privileged access to raw materials
15:52 What the reverse-engineering community has already conceded
18:34 What the forum did not discuss: the beings
21:06 An interfaith week in Washington
27:48 Crane Brinton's last lecture at Harvard
30:27 The argument for a new human faculty
36:56 What disclosure asks of religious institutions
39:32 What citizens can do now
Timestamps open the episode on YouTube at that moment.
Key passages
On what is at stake
“This is an extraordinarily important moment of choice that we’re going to have to make as citizens. If we continue to stand by allowing this type of thing to happen, this collapse of our constitutional government is going to cause a constriction of the information that’s going to be available.”
On the governance board
“All of the people that are on the review board of what’s to be released to the public are all non-elected appointees of the executive branch. They can be fired — as the Supreme Court has just made clear — at any time by the president.”
On what the forum left out
“There was virtually no conversation at all about the people that are on board here… all the conversation was about the technology still, and about the commercial uses of it.”
On the civilizational stakes
“If we can secure full disclosure of this information, it’s going to initiate a major new era in the entire history of our human species.”
Related from the Learning Library
The UAP Disclosure Timeline — sixty-nine documented moments, including the legislative fight described in this episode.
Take Action — contact your representatives and ask candidates to sign the UAP Transparency Pledge.
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.