The report, mandated as part of the coronavirus pandemic relief package signed by then-president Trump at the end of last year, comes after the Pentagon established an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force last year, and has since urged military pilots to report unusual sightings.
Senior administration officials who were briefed on the findings of the report told the New York Times's Julian Barnes and Helene Cooper earlier this month that American intelligence officials “have found no evidence that aerial phenomena witnessed by Navy pilots in recent years are alien spacecraft, but they still cannot explain the unusual movements that have mystified scientists and the military.”
The news was dismissed as a nothing-burger by some readers but viewed as a major development by others who have tracked the issue closely:
- “This report has definitively stated once and for all that it’s not our technology,” Lue Elizondo, former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, told Power Up during an interview. “And that’s hugely important. For 30 years there has always been this undercurrent, if you will, these conspiracies that there was… some sort of a super special technology that has been implemented and we’ve been – just been very careless about it. And I think that argument was finally put to bed this week.”
- “So that really only leaves two other options,” Elizondo added, “It’s foreign adversaries or it’s something quite different. And I think we’re now beginning to learn… and I can certainly tell you from my experience that we’re pretty confident that it’s not Russian or Chinese technology.”
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have started taking the issue more seriously and have come to view UAPs as a potential national security threat. They're eager for answers: “There’s stuff flying in our airspace and we don’t know who it is and it’s not ours. So we should know who it is, especially if it’s an adversary that’s made a technological leap,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Politico's Andrew Desiderio.
- “We don’t know,” Rubio added. “But how can we have stuff flying over restricted military airspace and not even be curious — not to mention concerned — about who it is and why they’re here?”
- “The report is also expected to disprove some of the more wacky theories about certain sightings, which have fueled conspiracy theories about extraterrestrial life. The fact that the U.S. government is even producing a report on the matter — sought by Congress in last year’s defense policy bill — shows that top officials are trying to move past the sci-fi reputation of UAPs.”
Mixed messages: “The government’s latest report on U.F.O.s, which the Pentagon now wants to call unidentified aerial phenomena, is unlikely to settle anything,” the NYT's Julian Barnes reports. “Due out on Friday, the report’s expected assertion that no classified American programs exist to explain the observations will most likely be dismissed by those primed to disbelieve government pronouncements. Its failure to find affirmative evidence of alien spaceships will largely be ignored by those most passionate about theories of extraterrestrial visitation.”
- “It will also serve as the latest in a history of efforts by the government to confront public eagerness to know more about U.F.O.s. Officials have sometimes sought to be transparent about what they know, according to documents and interviews, but in other instances allowed confusion and conspiracy theories to take root as a useful cover-up for top-secret military programs.”
- “During the Cold War era, the public enthusiasm was a double-edged sword. While alien visitation was a helpful theory to explain away the top-secret programs developed near Roswell and in Nevada’s Area 51, where the Air Force and the C.I.A. developed reconnaissance programs intended to look deep into the Soviet Union, early C.I.A. documents show the agency worrying that the American public’s obsession with aliens in the 1950s could make the public vulnerable to Russian disinformation efforts.”
- “The agency’s understandable interest in concealing its role in some of the early U.F.O. investigations ultimately proved to be counterproductive, that it just fed into later charges of conspiracy and cover up,” David Robarge, the chief C.I.A. historian, told Barnes.
‘WE HAVE A DEAL’ — WELL, SORT OF: “President Biden signed off Thursday on a bipartisan agreement that would pump hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending into infrastructure projects across the country — handing him, if it passes congressional muster, a significant cross-party achievement and a top goal of his administration,” our colleagues Seung Min Kim, Mike DeBonis and Jeff Stein report.
- “But Biden immediately pledged to abandon the compromise if Democrats on Capitol Hill do not simultaneously send him a sweeping package of Democratic spending priorities, opposed by most Republicans, to shore up the nation’s social safety net.”
- “The comments underscored the complex legislative path ahead for Biden’s infrastructure agenda, which will force Democratic leaders to keep nervous liberals at bay while attracting enough GOP support to satisfy the president’s push for bipartisanship.”
- This is a big deal. Literally. “If passed by Congress, the $973 billion bipartisan agreement to fund roads, bridges, pipes, transmission lines and broadband over five years will be the largest package of spending on the country’s infrastructure in modern history,” per our colleagues Annie Linskey and Tyler Pager.
A bipartisan victory. “On Thursday, both sides took a moment for a victory lap. The announcement featured a scene — highly unusual in recent years — of senators from both parties smiling and joking together. It also marked a signal moment for Biden’s insistence, over strong disagreement from many in his own party, that bipartisanship is still possible,” per Kim, DeBonis and Stein.
- “Biden has found a way to bridge a divided Washington — at least on the popular issue of spending money on construction — and achieve an agreement that eluded his predecessor, whose frequent promises to focus on infrastructure became a running joke in Washington,” Linskey and Pager write.
Reality check — “It’s not clear, though, that the bipartisan plan — a product of five Republicans and five Democrats — will muster the support of at least 60 senators to overcome any filibuster. And the two-track strategy promises to be a heavy lift for Democrats in a Congress where they have only the thinnest of majorities, and moderates and progressives have very different priorities,” the New York Times’ Emily Cochrane, Jim Tankersley and Jonathan Weisman report.
- And “Biden’s tentative win on infrastructure comes as progress on other Democratic priorities has stalled. The anniversary of George Floyd’s killing by a police officer in Minneapolis came and went without tangible progress on a police reform measure that is bogged down in Congress,” per Linskey and Pager.
- “Gun control remains out of reach even as the nation undergoes a wave of murders and mass shootings. And the week began with the failure of a sweeping voting rights measure billed by Democrats as a way of shoring up American democracy amid GOP efforts to limit access to voting.”
Global power
HAPPENING TODAY: “Biden will meet at the White House with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the chairman of Afghanistan's High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah to discuss U.S. troop withdrawal amid a surge in fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban across the country,” Reuters’ Humeyra Pamuk reports.
- The meeting comes on the heels of the release of “a new U.S. intelligence assessment [that] says that the Afghan government could fall within six months of the American military departing,” our colleagues Dan Lamothe and Shane Harris report.
- “The assessment, distributed among U.S. officials within the past week, highlights an increasingly stark picture as the U.S. military sends home troops and equipment: The Taliban continues to take control of districts across the country, and Afghan military units are either laying down their arms or are being routed in bloody clashes.”
What to watch: “The United States is set to evacuate thousands of vulnerable Afghan interpreters before the U.S. military completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan so they can wrap up their visa applications from safety,” Reuters’ Patricia Zengerle, Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart report. “The evacuation of the at-risk Afghans will include their family members for a total of as many as 50,000 people.”
TODAY’S OTHER BIG TRIP: Vice President “Harris faces perhaps the most politically challenging moment of her vice presidency when she heads to the U.S. southern border as part of her role leading the Biden administration’s response to a steep increase in migration,” AP News’ Alexandra Jaffe reports.
- “While in El Paso, she will tour a Customs and Border Patrol processing center, hold a conversation with advocates from faith-based organizations as well as shelter and legal service providers, and deliver remarks.”
- Strategic timing: “Harris’ border visit comes just days before Trump is set to travel to the border, where he will be joined by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and a group of House Republicans,” Politico’s Daniel Lippman reports.
- “Harris, who has been tasked by Biden with tackling the root causes of immigration in Latin America, has spent weeks deflecting questions about why she has not visited the area, saying the border itself is not part of her portfolio,” our colleagues Tyler Pager and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. report.
The investigations
THE CONSEQUENCES ARE ROLLING IN FOR TRUMP WORLD:
- “The suspension represents one of the first serious attempts to impose consequences on Trump or his top allies for spreading falsehoods about the election results, rhetoric that has continued unabated since Biden’s victory was certified.”
- “I will always be proud that we did our part on that tragic day to reconvene the Congress and fulfilled our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” Pence said at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. “The truth is, there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”
- “The select committee will corral the various House Democratic investigations into the events surrounding the deadly insurrection into a single effort to examine what led to pro-Donald Trump supporters breaching the Capitol and disrupting the certification of Biden's November 2020 election win.”
Outside the Beltway
- “First and foremost in Cohen’s mind was the whereabouts of her husband, Brad Cohen, whom she had not seen or heard from since part of the Champlain Towers South Condo came crashing down, wiping away 55 units in mere seconds.”
- “‘We can’t find him,’ Soriya Cohen said Thursday afternoon, showing anyone who could help a photo of her husband that she keeps in her iPhone. She said rescuers took a DNA sample of their daughter in case they need it to identify Brad Cohen’s body. ‘He hasn’t responded for 15 hours … Maybe he’s alive, I don’t know.’”
“Those last three words underscored the agony shared by dozens of survivors and loved ones of the missing who gathered at the Surfside Community Center seeking answers and solace. And they echo the response of many who cannot fathom how a concrete structure housing dozens of homes could suddenly fall to the ground.”
- “Investigators are just beginning to try to unravel what caused the Champlain Towers South to collapse into a heap of rubble and leave 99 people missing. Experts on sea level rise and climate change caution that it is too soon to speculate if rising seas helped destabilize the oceanfront condo.”
- “But it’s already clear that South Florida has been on the front lines of sea level rise and that the impacts of climate change on the infrastructure of the region — from septic systems to aquifers to shoreline erosion — will be a management problem for years to come.”
In the media
WEEKEND REEADS:
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