‘We’re Going To Uncover the Cover Up’: House Probes Government Handling of UFOs

Plus: Moralism is ruining cultural criticism, Biden administration mandates bigger plane bathrooms, and more…

ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN

In response to reported encounters by Navy pilots, the U.S. military and the intelligence community have sought to more closely analyze such incidents. The sightings, including some that are believed to be drones or unmanned craft — like the Chinese surveillance airship shot down in U.S. airspace earlier this year — have fueled concerns that American adversaries could have developed new technologies that pose a threat to U.S. security.

“The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, nonhuman intelligence and unexplainable phenomena,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.).

One of the witnesses yesterday was David Grusch, a former Pentagon employee who worked on the UAP task force and now claims the government is secretly storing downed alien vessels.

“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multidecade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” Grusch claimed again yesterday. He also agreed when asked whether he had “personal knowledge of people who’ve been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal these extraterrestrial technology.”

“Even by the extraordinary standards of contemporary political theater, Wednesday’s House Oversight subcommittee hearing on U.F.O.s stood out,” writes Helene Cooper at The New York Times:

Neither of the pilots speculated about the provenance of what they saw. The sightings were reported to the Pentagon’s shadowy Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which analyzes radar data, video footage and accounts provided by senior officers.

Some of the objects in videos released by the Pentagon have been explained as optical illusions or drones, but others remain unexplained.

Who knows, maybe a big juicy government cover-up involving aliens—even one that’s pretty purely speculative at this point—is exactly what American politics in 2023 needs…

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“We are proud to announce this rule that will make airplane bathrooms larger and more accessible, ensuring travelers in wheelchairs are afforded the same access and dignity as the rest of the traveling public,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a statement.

By 2026, newly delivered single-aisle airplanes will have to include grab bars and accessible faucets, door locks, and call buttons, as well as minimal obstructions for an onboard wheelchair to get there.

Implementing the new requirements will require planes to have fewer seats and, as a consequence, raise fares for everybody, airline trade groups Airlines for America and the International Air Transport Association told the Transportation Department last year.

Fully compliant solutions would require the loss of at least three seats and possibly six seats, as well as galley capacity and workspace, they said. “Excluding the costs of implementation…the impacts on U.S. passenger airlines” would be “approximately $1.4 billion per year in lost revenue upon total industry-wide implementation” and “the conservatively estimated annual impact on foreign carriers would be approximately $250 million.”

Making airline bathrooms accessible to people in wheelchairs is certainly a good thing. But it still falls under the rubric of things that airlines could implement on their own accord (Airlines for America spokesperson Hannah Walden said U.S. airlines had already been “voluntarily working with the disability community, the Department of Transportation and industry stakeholders for seven years on solutions”) and with a solution more narrowly tailored, like implementing larger bathrooms on select planes rather than all of them.

The government has no business issuing such a wide-reaching mandate that will raise costs for airline passengers and companies alike.

But the Biden administration has been weirdly fixated on all the rules surrounding air travel. At times it seems like President Joe Biden is trying to situate himself as travel agent in chief. During Biden’s State of the Union address back in February, he pledged to make it easier for Americans to “afford that family trip” by doing things like “making airlines show you the full ticket price upfront and refund your money if your flight is canceled or delayed,” banning “surprise ‘resort fees’ that hotels tack on to your bill,” and prohibiting airlines “from charging up to $50 roundtrip for families just to sit together.”

QUICK HITS

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 26, 2023

• A judge is questioning a deal that would allow Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and avoid prosecution on a gun charge. “The federal judge overseeing the case, Maryellen Noreika, deferred her decision on approving the deal between Mr. Biden and federal prosecutors on Wednesday afternoon,” reports The New York Times. But the judge’s questions “should not obscure the point that the law he broke is unjust and arguably unconstitutional,” writes Reason’s Jacob Sullum.

• “The U.K. Parliament is pushing ahead with a sprawling internet regulation bill that will, among other things, undermine the privacy of people around the world,” warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

• A Circleville, Ohio, police officer “who released his police dog on a black truck driver who was surrendering earlier this month — ignoring clear orders to restrain the animal — has been fired,” reports the New York Post.

• RIP Sinéad O’Connor.

Since starting at Reason in 2014, Brown has won multiple awards for her writing on the U.S. government’s war on sex. Brown’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Playboy, Fox News, Politico, The Week, and numerous other publications. You can follow her on Twitter @ENBrown.

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