Claim of nefarious plot draws attention of lawmakers and president – but are disappearances and deaths really linked?

Are the disappearances or deaths of at least 11 US scientists, each allegedly connected in some way to space, defense and nuclear research, really linked in a nefarious plot: one that involves the Chinese or other state enemies, or possibly links back to UFOs?

A conspiracy theory positing exactly that has roared through sections of the US population in recent weeks, spreading rapidly from the internet into rightwing media and hence into the mainstream press and prompting an inquiry from Congress and questions from Donald Trump.

What is behind the surge in ufology? The recent spike can be traced to the top of the US government, which inspired me to start investigating ...

I never gave much thought to aliens beyond Star Wars. I put extraterrestrials and their flying saucers in a box marked “nonsense” long ago, along with political manifestos, loyalty cards, Black Friday, fairies, pixies, elves, ghosts and ghouls.

Then, in 2017, the New York Times published an article with the headline “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious UFO Program”. Apparently, the US government had been chasing UFOs for years. These weren’t the ramblings of the kind of straw-chewing rancher you would see in a sci-fi film; the story was told by a military intelligence officer called Luis Elizondo. He claimed he ran a secret Pentagon programme called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which had found evidence that UFOs were flying around military bases, behaving in ways that defied the laws of physics.

From Vance’s interest to Trump’s commitment to disclosure, administration’s fascination with UFOs has experts feeling close to evidence of aliens

Like most politicians, Donald Trump did not campaign on the issue of space aliens. But 15 months into his second term, UFO enthusiasts have been buoyed by the Trump administration’s apparent fascination with extraterrestrials, with one expert claiming the human race has “never been closer” to being presented with hard evidence of aliens.

After a largely alien-free first 12 months, the president has committed himself to UFO disclosure in 2026. In February, Trump directed various departments to release “government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life”, and the White House took the unusual step of registering domain “aliens.gov” in March, setting pulses racing among believers online.

Vice-president promises ‘to get to the bottom of’ reports of US government files about unidentified flying objects

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JD Vance, the vice-president of the United States, said this weekend that he considers aliens to be “demons”.

With the war in Iran continuing, petrol and grocery prices soaring, and chaos continuing at US airports as a partial government shutdown endures, Vance appeared on the conservative Benny Show podcast, released on Saturday, to promise that he would spend time looking into what he called his “obsession” with UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors.

The president promised to spill the beans about little green men. Is that why the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency registered the domains alien.gov and aliens.gov?

There are some very important files sitting in a US government building right now, full of shocking details that certain entities would prefer to keep hidden. For far too long the public has been kept in the dark but, thanks to the self-proclaimed “most transparent administration in history”, the truth could be about to be revealed.

Obviously I’m not talking about the Epstein files. I’ve got a funny feeling we’re never going to see the rest of those. FBI agents have been paid nearly $1m in overtime to work on the “Epstein Transparency Project”, also referred to as the “Special Redaction Project”, but even with all that special redacting, more than 2m documents have reportedly not been released. No, I’m talking about proof of alien life – which is far less fanciful than the idea that powerful people might actually face accountability.

Web domain added to government registry a month after president directed agencies to release files relating to UAPs

It was a gift to conspiracy theorists.

Last week, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency registered the alien.gov and aliens.gov web domains, adding both to the official government website registry.

The president’s announcement came after predecessor Barack Obama went viral last week for saying aliens are ‘real’

Donald Trump has announced he is directing the defense department and other agencies to release whatever files they have on the search for alien life.

In a post on his social media platform, Trump said that he will ask the defense secretary and others “to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”