Reporter Now Briefs Senators On UFO Developments

Members of Congress are now stopping a reporter in the hallway to ask what is new in the UFO world. That reporter is Matt Laslo, who runs Ask a Pol and who spent a full month tracking down and questioning all one hundred United States senators on this subject. His update is that the interest inside those offices never disappeared. Cory Booker of New Jersey told him his own staff cannot get enough of the topic. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is deeply invested in it. Neither one sits on Armed Services or Intelligence, which means the interest never reaches the committees that could act on it.

The members who do hold that power sound very different. Jim Risch of Idaho chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a panel that shapes how the United States deals with every other country on the planet. According to Laslo, when he raised the subject, Risch told him that he does not read UFO stories. Laslo’s point is about what that answer excludes. In December of 2023, uncrewed aircraft moved over Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia across seventeen days, and the base cancelled night training and relocated its F-22 Raptors. A year later, the FBI testified that it could not explain what was flying over New Jersey. Every one of those objects was unidentified, which makes every one of them a UFO by definition.

The capability gap behind those incidents is still open. As reported by Air and Space Forces Magazine, Pentagon officials told the House Oversight Committee in April of 2025 that the military still lacks the ability to reliably identify, track, and engage drones like the ones seen at Langley. Two Virginia senators sit close to that problem. Tim Kaine serves on Armed Services and Mark Warner has served as chair and vice chair of Senate Intelligence. Laslo says the Pentagon briefed them roughly a year after the incursions ended and still could not say who sent the objects, what they were, or where they came from.

Laslo says most senators will not engage on the term UAP, so he asks about drones instead. Same airspace, same objects, different word, and the conversation opens. Mark Kelly of Arizona is his clearest example. Kelly is a retired Navy captain and a former astronaut who laughs off the UAP framing but engages fully on uncrewed aircraft over Arizona ranges, convinced the answer is foreign. The case behind that is documented. On January 19th of 2023, an F-16 flying inside restricted airspace over the Barry M. Goldwater Range was struck on the rear of the canopy by an orange and white object near Gila Bend. Defense officials later told Fox News the aircrew concluded it was a small drone. The operator was never identified and the object was never recovered.

Matt Laslo

Sources

Yale Student UFO Society. (2026, July 28). Matt Laslo: Talking to all 100 senators about UAP [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSIH7K3eOok