Since taking office, President Donald Trump has been releasing many classified documents related to years of government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and one political theorist thinks something else is afoot.

Writing for The Bulwark on Wednesday, Yaniv Regev explained that Trump's UFO obsession is less about transparency, national security, a casual interest in science fiction films and his populist supporters advocating for the tearing down of institutions. It's about politics. Not the politics of distraction, as Alex Jones claimed, but the politics of manipulation.

The "release the documents" argument, he said, makes sense intuitively. After all, the government hides too much, transparency is good, and a more "informed citizenry is an empowered one." It certainly would play well in polling, but Regev thinks it's being weaponized.

Regev compared Trump to his international counterparts like Jair Bolsonaro and Viktor Orban, each of whom "built a political career railing against hidden elites and demanding the state be exposed to the light — and each, once in power, governed with conspicuous contempt for the accountability he'd once claimed to champion."

Leaders like Trump are trying to build "distrust" while "casting themselves as truthtellers willing to rip back the curtain, populists reify this distrust, transforming it into a political force they can control," wrote Regev. "If there’s a curtain to be torn, as the populists howl, we must conclude there is something big hiding behind it."

So, the files have been released, leaving more questions than answers. Regev described them as the Department of Defense making clear that they have investigated many of the reports and their experts can't crack it.

The Trump administration seems to think, why not let the masses have a crack at it? "Here’s some footage we cannot explain. You figure it out," he said.

But in the case of the UFO files, there's no real way of understanding the data that was released. It's simply a cache of videos and field reports. There are no conclusions or even revelations about what the government learned or discovered.

Like the Jeffrey Epstein investigation the files consist of large batches of raw data with large blocks of black text. The transparency law passed by Congress said that the only redactions were to be the survivors. It bred further mistrust and conspiracy theories that the Justice Department and the political "elite" were continuing to hide things from the public. Regev characterized it a kind of "transparency-to-conspiracy pipeline."

He closed by saying that "transparency maximalism" is like having the sunlight so bright it doesn't just disinfect, but it's so blinding that it leaves people unable to see clearly.

On Tuesday President Donald Trump appointed a famous and controversial Harvard theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astronomer to lead a group of scientists to investigate UFOs and whether they pose a national security threat.

Dr. Avi Loeb, who led Harvard’s astronomy department until 2020 and is widely respected for his research into black holes, was publicly tapped by the Trump administration on Tuesday, according to a report by the Associated Press. In 2022, Dr. Ethan Siegel, an astrophysicist and science writer who frequently criticized Loeb’s work, told this journalist for Salon that Loeb’s research into a mysterious space object that crashed into the ocean, ‘Oumuamua, was a “travesty.” By contrast, Loeb is very popular among the lay UFO fan community, and more than three dozen scientists co-authored a 2023 paper with him in the scientific publication Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation advocating his recommended methods for learning more about UFOs (unidentified flying objects) and UAPS (unidentified anomalous phenomena).

Speaking to AlterNet about his recent appointment, Loeb broke down how he learned about his appointment and what he believes it could mean for American politics.

“I was contacted by the office of the Director of National Intelligence and was asked to lead a council that will advise that office, the ODNI, the White House, the FBI, and the intelligence community, and of course the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office in the Pentagon, providing scientific advice to figure out the nature of unidentified anomalous phenomena, UAP,” Loeb told AlterNet. “And it looks like, if they were sure that they're dealing with human-made objects, they would have a classified memo exchange within the Pentagon or the intelligence agencies. But the fact that they're reaching out to the scientific community for help implies that they cannot really tell that some of these things are definitely human-made. And obviously, if they're human-made, there would be concern for national security, given that these objects are found near strategic assets.”

Because the Trump administration reached out to Loeb, he believes this means that “they really need advice.” He continued by explaining how he will apply the scientific method to his directives.

“First we have to review any information that they can share with us, with the council,” Loeb told AlterNet. “So I first assembled a team of 15 scientists who are exceptional, who have expertise in the physics of oceanography, statistics, and psychology, because these objects are interacting with humans. And we need all these aspects to understand the reported events. And we already submitted, since I assembled this team — and it's really an exceptional team, people who have a fresh mind with respect to the phenomena, I deliberately did not select people with an agenda or baggage regarding their views on the subject, because we need to provide scientific advice — and we already submitted a request for more than 50 items of information on specific incidents, and perhaps materials that the US government might have, and we should see what we hear in response.”

Because Loeb and his scientific team will only analyze unclassified information, they will be able to share their findings with the public, guaranteeing transparency about a subject that is often contentious. Coincidentally, he noted that he recently examined materials released on June 12th of this year, the same day as the Steven Spielberg movie “Disclosure Day,” which explicitly discusses how humanity could be brought together by the revelation that extraterrestrial life exists.

While Loeb admitted that he is not a fan of science fiction “because very often it violates the laws of physics,” he admitted that he feels the sense of wonder and hope captured by Spielberg’s motion picture.

“I feel like a kid in a candy store, in a way, as long as we receive sufficient information that is substantive — because the quality of our deliberations, our analysis, will reflect the quality of the data that we receive,” Loeb told AlterNet. “Science is guided by data. So what I say is, let's keep our eyes on the orbs, not on social media. It's not a matter of opinions — we just need the data, the evidence, just like a detective. So it's a great privilege for me to be involved in figuring things out.”

He added, “Of course, if we find a non-human-made technological object, the implications would be huge for our future. Because, first, we might learn about new science, new technologies. Second, it might imply that we're not at the top of the food chain, cosmologically speaking.

And my hope is that it'll be just like a knock on the door — when all family members in the house hear a knock on the door by a neighbor, all the loud arguments quiet down. So it'll change our priorities from conflicts, which you find every day in the news, to cooperation and response to this neighbor that we just found. It's sort of akin to finding a sibling in our family of intelligent civilizations. And for those people who have religious beliefs, they should not necessarily assume that God is a parent who can attend to only one child.”

Also like “Disclosure Day,” Loeb believes that the discovery of alien organisms could help humanity overcome the differences that sharply divide us. When asked about whether he has yet met President Trump (he said has not), he pivoted to that subject.

“The interesting aspect of this is that both Republican and Democrat members of the House and the Senate are working together on this subject of disclosure, and everyone is excited,” Loeb told AlterNet while laughing. “It's a reminder that science is better than politics. What do I mean by science is better than politics? It brings people together rather than separating them. So in an age where you have a lot of polarization as a result of social media, as a result of political upheaval and so forth, it's really refreshing to find a subject where everyone comes together.”

He then observed, “I was in the US Senate on Thursday for the UAP Disclosure Forum, and there were members of Congress there — you could see half of them were Republicans, half were Democrats, and they were all rooting for it. I find that very refreshing. And I think that is a reflection of what will happen if we do find that we are being visited, because then the mindset will change. People will stop arguing with each other on relatively mundane matters when they realize something cosmologically important — that we are not alone. And it'll change everything.”

Responding to a question from AlterNet about Loeb’s appointment, Siegel reiterated the disdain for Loeb he first expressed to this journalist four years ago.

“This is extremely typical and to be expected of the Trump Administration,” Siegel told AlterNet. “Legitimate science conducted by those who value truth, facts, and the common good of humanity has repeatedly been rejected by this Presidential Administration in favor of sensationalism, grift, and self-enrichment. On those metrics, there is no better qualified astronomer in the country than Avi Loeb, who will no doubt find himself surrounded by like-minded individuals like Dr. Oz, Lee Zeldin, and RFK Jr. in the quest to destroy what remains of the American scientific enterprise entirely, and to replace it with Lysenko-esque policies that will lead to both long-term and short-term harm to all.”

Unlike Siegel, Dr. Franck Marchis — the CEO of SkyMapper and an astronomer at the SETI Institute (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) — had a mixture of praise and criticism for Loeb.

“I also think Avi too often starts with the exciting explanation before the data are strong enough to support it,” Marchis told AlterNet. “That is not how science works. Science is not about making a bold assumption first and then looking for evidence to confirm it. Science is about collecting calibrated data, sharing it, letting other teams verify it, and being ready to change your mind.”

He added, “I also disagree with the idea that scientists are somehow hiding the truth. Most scientists, including my colleagues at the SETI Institute, I know are open, curious, imaginative, and very happy to be surprised. We just know that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Check our recent discussion with Jill Tarter [a fellow SETI astronomer] for instance. This is exactly why we are building SkyMapper and SkySphere. The goal is to observe the sky all the time, from many places, with instruments that can produce time-stamped and verifiable data.”

President Donald Trump's administration has dropped a new tranche of government materials related to UFOs, and as one prominent GOP pollster pointed out, the timing of the release appears to have given the game away about what they are attempting to distract from.

On Friday, controversial Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller announced in a post to X that a "new tranche of UFO files and videos just dropped," sharing a link to the files on the official Department of Defense website. The administration has been pledging to release previously classified materials pertaining to unidentified flying objects — or, unidentified aerial phenomenon — ever since the subject rocketed back into the public consciousness after an interview with former President Barack Obama.

When pressed in the interview about whether or not aliens were real, Obama said they were, but also stressed that they were not being housed in Area 51. He later clarified that this was simply his personal belief, and not a new revelation based on things he learned as president, but the answer nonetheless sent imaginations spinning.

Since it began releasing materials, the Trump administration has been accused by critics of using UFOs as another in its long line of attempted distractions, hoping to divert attention away from its growing pile of failures and scandals. Responding to Miller on X, Sarah Longwell, a major conservative pollster and publisher of The Bulwark, suggested what this new release might be meant to distract from.

"This Iran deal must be horrible," she posted to X.

Earlier this week, Trump threatened to carry out heavy military strikes against Iran as peace talks with the Middle Eastern nation continued to flounder, but was ultimately talked down by advisers who claimed that a deal was close. Critics, however, have slammed the administration for claiming that a deal is close on a seemingly weekly basis, before reports promptly emerge revealing that talks are still ongoing.

Others on social media similarly criticized the administration for using UFO news as a distraction.

"Translation: inflation is up and our war with Iran is killing us in the polls," economist Matt Kibbe posted to X.

"Anything to avoid the Iran War debacle and high prices," Democratic politician Christopher posted to X.

"The administration really wants to distract you from something. Do not install," podcaster Brent Freeman posted to X.

Christopher Sharp, a journalist and founder of the UFO-centric news outlet, Liberation Times, went a step further, offering suggestions for more meaningful steps the administration could take towards disclosure.

"The question is whether Miller and Trump will now provide whistleblowers with amnesty and immunity," Sharp posted to X. "They should also contemplate reevaluating the [Department of Defense's] stance on UAP."

President Donald Trump has promised to look into the mysterious deaths of officials and scientists studying UFOs — but experts say this is one enigma that has more to it than appears to be the case at face value.

“The accounts were published breathlessly online in social media but also by rightwing press accounts,” reported The Guardian’s Edward Helmore on Sunday. “Trump himself was asked about the story and promised to look into it. Soon, Republican lawmakers joined the debate demanded in a letter that the FBI, the Department of Energy, Nasa and other agencies investigate a ‘possible sinister connection’ in the disappearances.”

The “disappearances” in question include those of retired US air force major general William “Neil” McCasland, 68, who in February walked out of his Albuquerque, New Mexico home, never to be seen since; Michael David Hicks, a scientist who worked at the NASA jet propulsion lab from 1998 to 2022 and died in 2023 at age 59 of unknown causes; Monica Reza, a scientist who disappeared last June after serving as director of the NASA lab’s materials processing group; astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, who was shot dead on his porch; Amy Eskridge, an Alabama-based researcher who claimed to be working on “gravity-modification research” and was found dead by an apparent suicide in 2022 despite telling NewsNation that “if you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not”; MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro, who was killed by a former classmate; and Jason Thomas, a chemical biologist at drugmaker Novartis, who disappeared in December with his remains being discovered in March.

“Then, last week, UFO researcher David Wilcock, 53, used a gun to kill himself outside his home in Boulder county, Colorado,” Helmore reported. “Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett responded to a social media post announcing Wilcock’s death by writing: ‘Not cool.’ Burchett told the Daily Mail: ‘I just don’t think there’s any chance that this is just all coincidental.’”

Speaking to The Guardian, Penn State history and bioethics professor Greg Eghigan contextualized the UFO scientist story within the broader paradigm of American conspiracy theory history.

Greg Eghigian, professor of history and bioethics at Penn State and author of After the Flying Saucers Came, is different from the New Jersey drone scare of late 2024.

“It’s one of those things that get folded into other kinds of concerns and conspiracy theories that are out there about science and medicine that have been circulating around since Covid,” Eghigian explained. “That fold neatly into the decades-old notion that UFOs are spotted around nuclear facilities and some of these facilities may be masking UFO-related projects.”

He added that a convergence of factors make UFO-based conspiracy theories so appealing at this specific juncture in American history.

“So when people want to connect these dots it falls readily into a sweet spot for UFO lore because you have all the elements that have always been there – the military, state secrets, nuclear facilities and technologies, and fear of figures that are missing,” Eghigian said. “What is it? Are they being abducted? Assassinated because they know too much? The seeds of this were planted decades ago.”

Speaking to this journalist for Salon last year, Haley Morris, co-founder of the military pilot-led nonprofit Americans for Safe Aerospace, the world's largest UFO advocacy organization, argued that Trump should declassify those documents, echoing an argument made by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Yet she also warned that those declassifications may disappoint UFO fans.

“Keep in mind that declassification doesn’t necessarily come with explanations,” Morris said at the time, adding that the “best case is that with transparency, people can see the [UFO] mystery for themselves and hard data is made available for the scientific community to try and get some answers.”

A 1956 book favored by UFO believers that is considered "an enduring classic in the fields of new religious studies, cult research, and social psychology," is being called into question as a potential lie, according to Anna Merlan in Mother Jones.

When Prophecy Fails, written by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, details a study of a UFO cult known as the Seekers that predicted the end of the world.

The book also introduced the theory of cognitive dissonance, which explains the psychological mechanisms for how people cope when their deeply held beliefs are contradicted by reality.

"The book is gripping, an in-depth social and psychological study of Martin’s group and how they behaved, both as it was forming and after their prophetic visions failed to take place," Merlan explains, adding that "it has served as a key basis for the psychological concept of cognitive dissonance."

That theory "was taken further by Festinger, who wrote a widely-cited followup book on cognitive dissonance and how people try to engage in 'dissonance reduction' to reduce the psychological pressure and unease they experience when confronted with conflicting information," she notes.

But a new study that examined Festinger’s recently unsealed papers claims that the book "leans on lies, omissions and serious manipulation," Merlan says.

"The article, published this month in the peer-reviewed Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, also argues that, contrary to the researchers’ longstanding narrative, the group members all showed clear signs of quickly abandoning their beliefs when the UFOs failed to arrive, and that the group soon dissolved," Mother Jones reports.

Thomas Kelly, the author of the article, says "while core members of the group stayed active in UFO spaces, they did not keep insisting on a world-ending flood, or that aliens would land and take them away."

The Seekers, Kelly notes, were quick to disavow those beliefs and eventually rebranded.

The group's leader Dorothy Martin "distanced herself completely from these events, even rewriting the story of how she developed her psychic powers," Kelly writes.

"Kelly’s paper not only undercuts the researchers’ claims and their application of the theory developed from them, but also alleges they committed scientific misconduct, including 'fabricated psychic messages, covert manipulation, and interference in a child welfare investigation,'" Merlan explains.

Kelly says that researchers "twisted the group’s behavior to fit their thesis, downplaying the proselytization they did before the prophecy failed and playing up any proselytization that occurred after."

Merlan notes that this interpretation is key, "because the thesis of When Prophecy Fails is clear: after Martin’s failed prophecy, her group doubled down, not only by refusing to acknowledge that their core predictions had utterly failed, but banding together with a new zeal to spread them."

"The interference Kelly uncovered goes beyond manipulation," Merlan notes, but not everyone agrees with Kelly's interpretation.

Poulomi Saha, a University of California-Berkeley associate professor in critical theory who is writing a book on the cultural fascination with cults, says Kelly used a narrow reading of limited materials to draw his conclusion.

"This author ends up doing what he accuses the authors of When Prophecy Fails of doing, which is cherrypicking evidence," Saha says of Kelly, adding, “if we want to critique the methods and think about how methodology has changed in 70 years, I would encourage that. We’re talking about different academic and scholarly methods 70 years ago around things like participant observation.”

Saha also says that Kelly was “very dismissive” of the fact that group members continued to believe in UFOs.

Thibault Le Texier, an associate researcher at France’s European Centre for Sociology and Political Science, says that "There are findings that people want to hear and findings that people don’t want to hear,” and regardless of what people believe, the book will probably continue to "gain a lot of attention in spite of being debunked."

"It’s also because these are fascinating stories, as riveting as a great movie," he adds.

Merlan agrees, saying, "For now, at least, Prophecy continues to be widely referred to as a classic of the genre. The aliens, it must be said, have not yet landed."

Before seeing the new science fiction movie “Disclosure Day,” I reached out to some of Earth’s top experts about its underlying premise — that is, whether or not extraterrestrial intelligence exists in the universe.

What I learned has changed how I view not only this particular movie, but the poignant subject it semi-realistically depicts. Thanks to the scientists I interviewed and the artists who put "Disclosure Day" on the big screen, I can look at the subject of UFO sightings and feel an emotion that is increasingly rare these days — hope.

In “Disclosure Day,” directed and co-written (with David Koepp) by Steven Spielberg, cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) teams up with meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) to expose evidence that intelligent aliens have already visited our planet. It’s a tantalizing concept, especially since evidence of UFO sightings became increasingly public starting in 2023. Spielberg himself has also been long interested in this topic as a filmmaker, with “Disclosure Day” joining three of his other movies in the alien genre. All three of those entries are, in my opinion, classics; they include “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in 1977, “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” in 1982 and “War of the Worlds” (which I saw in theaters three times in 2005, and personally regard as the best of all Spielberg's alien movies).

Does “Disclosure Day” hold up to its predecessors? As each of those movies captured different aspects of the possibilities involved in human-alien encounters — the wonder, the childlike dreaming and the horror — I wanted to learn how well "Disclosure Day" captures a fourth aspect of this subject, the act of disclosure itself. Before diving into the movie’s intrinsic quality, let me first review the thoughts of scientists far more knowledgeable about UFOs and possible alien intelligence than myself.

"There is credible evidence that people, cameras, radar systems, and other instruments sometimes observe phenomena that cannot immediately be identified,” Dr. Franck Marchis, Senior Astronomer and Director of Citizen Science, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, told AlterNet. “In that limited sense, unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, certainly exist.” Marchis qualified this observation, though, by noting that the objective reality of UFOs and UAPs does not mean they exist because of intelligent aliens.

"An unexplained observation is not, by itself, evidence of an extraordinary origin," Marchis said. "Most cases are eventually explained as aircraft, satellites, balloons, drones, atmospheric effects, instrumental artifacts, or misinterpretations.”

Marchis added, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video or an eyewitness account is not enough. We need calibrated measurements, complete metadata, observations from multiple independent instruments, and analyses that can be reproduced by independent teams."

An Ivy League scholar who frequently discussed extraterrestrial intelligence confirmed Marchis’ claims.

"It is clear from government reports and disclosures that the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence agencies detect objects whose nature is unidentified,” Harvard University astronomy professor Avi Loeb told AlterNet. “This is a serious national security concern. But as a scientist, I view it as a golden opportunity to check whether one in a million unidentified objects may be non-human-made.”

Loeb continued, “We do not have definitive evidence for that from the disclosed data, but we do not have to wait for the U.S. government to tell us what is in the sky. We can simply look up. This is why I lead the Galileo Project at Harvard University which operates three new observatories (in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Nevada) and uses triangulation to determine distance, velocity and acceleration and AI to search for outliers among millions of detected objects in the sky."

Timothy Caulfield, Professor at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Law and School of Public Health, as well as Research Director at its Health Law Institute and a well-known pseudoscience debunker, agreed with Loeb and Marchis that "there is a great deal of solid – evidence-informed and science-based – speculation about the existence of intelligent life in the universe. Indeed, most experts in the field agree that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists. The universe is inconceivably massive!”

He concluded, “What is more controversial is whether aliens have visited Earth, which seems much much more unlikely, given what we know about physics, the size of the universe, and the lack of concrete evidence."

Now that we have established the part of “Disclosure Day” that is true (that UFOs have been spotted) and the part that is merely speculative (that they are piloted by intelligent aliens), how does the movie hold up as a work of art?

From a storytelling standpoint, "Disclosure Day" is more a spiritual sequel to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" than to any of Spielberg's other alien films. While "E.T." was mostly about the wonder toward aliens felt by a child and "War of the Worlds" analyzes the problem from the perspective of pure malevolent horror, "Disclosure Day" — like "Close Encounters" — uses a more cerebral approach. Both movies focus on the psychological and spiritual dimensions of the question of aliens encountering human being. How would the knowledge that we are not alone in the universe impact each of our lives as individuals? What would it mean for our civilization on a collective level? The story by Spielberg and screenplay by Koepp approach these subjects thoughtfully, clearly displaying their extensive self-education on the subject. Their answers to these questions are plausible, and thereby give "Disclosure Day" a sense of groundedness, of realism, more so than Spielberg's three previous alien flicks.

It is also the least accessible of those movies. When I surveyed fellow moviegoers after seeing the movie, four said they liked it, three said their feelings were mixed (one used the adjective "disappointed) and one said he outright "hated" it. Interestingly, those who liked it and those who didn't all cited the same reason — that this easily has the least spectacle of any of Spielberg's alien films. While it contains some memorable action set pieces and special effects-driven moments, there are far fewer than in the other Spielberg alien flicks. We don't get the memorable five tones from "Close Encounters," the silhouette of a child on his bike riding with an alien in the basket from "E.T." or the mammoth killer tripods from "War of the Worlds." "Disclosure Day," by contrast, is more focused on ideas than thrilling people.

For those inclined to philosophize about the subjects of aliens, human civilization and God itself, however, "Disclosure Day" is just intellectual enough to satisfy. Spielberg's and Koepp's ideas are not particularly original, but they are presented compellingly nonetheless, and are particularly sold by O'Connor's and Blunt's performances. After you leave the theater, you are left asking: How would humanity react to the disclosure that aliens exist?

"My hope is that disclosure would bring people together just like a knock on the front door by a neighbor calms down the loud arguments within the house,” Loeb told AlterNet. “We will also realize that we are not at the top of the food chain, cosmologically speaking."

Marchis was a little more optimistic than Loeb.

"I believe humanity is more prepared than it has ever been,” Marchis explained. “Science fiction, movies, journalism, and decades of scientific discussion have familiarized the public with the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The initial announcement would obviously be historic and dominate global attention. But after a few weeks, most people would still need to return to their jobs, families, and everyday concerns. The deeper effects would emerge over time, I believe. A confirmed discovery would probably lead to massive new investment in SETI, astronomy, planetary science, and space exploration.” (Marchis also mentioned that SETI “recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for SkySphere, our intelligent all-sky camera, to accelerate the deployment of this global network and allow individuals and organizations to participate directly in monitoring the sky.”)

"There seems little doubt that confirming the existence of extraterrestrial life would be a massive moment in the history of humanity,” Caulfield told AlterNet. “But, if it happens, it is very unlikely to be the result of ship landing or a dramatic reveal by a government whistleblower. It would be the discovery of an astronomical anomaly that is slowly confirmed via peer review and the use of rigorous scientific methods.”

He added that he thinks "most humans would welcome the news and be tremendously excited." I'm inclined to agree with him.

While I can’t say for sure that Caulfield and I are correct about whether humanity will by and large be excited if aliens visit Earth, I am certain that anyone with decent-or-above taste in entertainment will enjoy “Disclosure Day," especially if they share the values of Loeb, Marchis, Caulfield and yours truly.

Anyone who enjoys smart science fiction will find plenty to love. Yet I'm deeply grateful for "Disclosure Day" for an additional reason; in these bleak times, it actually inspires hope for the future.

A Tennessee church thinks that it's fighting Satan when it's fighting the political culture war, and the modern crusade has turned a "charismatic" movement into politics.

Extreme churches and beliefs that trend toward the more bizarre are those that often get ignored by politicians who don't want to be associated with something far outside of the mainstream. But the Tennessee church is using its charisma to turn culture wars into a very real battlefield where Satan is active in public life and Christians are called to fight back through prayer, prophecy and political engagement.

An extensive report from The Atlantic details the journey of Andrea and Mike Brewer, the founders of the Well, where they promote their belief that the Earth is the battlefield on which Heaven and Hell fight. Mike Brewer tells a story about his addiction to adult videos and was leading an unhappy life. While praying, he heard voices calling to him and felt what he believes was a demon being removed by God and replaced with the Holy Spirit.

"He and Andrea came to believe that God was unleashing new signs and wonders and raising up modern-day apostles and prophets, including, it turned out, them," the report said.

The couple belongs to a group of ministries called "Global Awakening," and Andrea has begun "studying demon history and hierarchies." The couple then started a demon hunt, finding it in a local bookshop and cafe. The owner discovered that the Brewers were accusing her of demonic activity when a customer flagged it. It happens to be across the street from the Brewers' new church.

Mike Brewer released several videos of himself sitting behind a desk and "he explained in a calm and methodical manner that the bookstore had been identified as a 'regional demonic stronghold.' A high-ranking demon named Lilith was involved, [owner Lisa] Misosky would learn, and the bookstore was being targeted for something called 'strategic-level spiritual warfare,' the goal of which was to 'remove the enemy.'"

Misosky was born in the town, she's a Catholic, a Democrat and she's gay. It might be the reason that the Brewers didn't first approach her to offer help or conduct their own blessing. They simply went to war.

“This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Misosky.

These are the same phrases coming from President Donald Trump, however. His ally, far-right firebrand Steve Bannon called Lutheran and Catholic people helping immigrants "demonic." His vice president, JD Vance thinks that "aliens" and "UFOs" are actually demons. One FEMA official claimed that he was transported through time and space to a Waffle House.

"In that beginning moment, though, Misosky was simply wondering what the accusations meant for her bookstore and the people who went there. Why was she being targeted? What, precisely, was demonic about Southland? The mah-jongg? The romantasy section? A drag performer called Icky Stardust? Her? She wondered if she needed to worry about security," the story read.

Misosky looked up her own demonology for answers and to prepare for what she could expect. A group known as the New Apostolic Reformation has devised its own "end times" narrative where they believe the Bible's tales of an afterlife are wrong and they're supposed to build their own Heaven on Earth while they await the return of Jesus Christ.

The Atlantic story noted that the narrative follows the political goals of the MAGA movement. "The Kingdom would have limited government, free markets, two genders, one kind of marriage, and one kind of God." The movement is no longer a marginal one. There are now Tens of millions of American Christians drawn into these kinds of ideologies and the explicit goal is to "dismantle the secular state," the American government itself.

Churches are no longer a place of peace but a "war room" and services are rallying cries. There are maps and battle themes and prayers that constantly focus on "victory over evil" language, the latter of which is government, education, the media, and businesses.

Trump's political victories have become signs of divine triumph over those they consider to be not fellow citizens but enemies in some kind of cosmic struggle.

The group has become a politically potent force, and the conflict between the Tennessee church and the local bookshop is only the beginning.

President Donald Trump has a number of supporters who believe in various conspiracy theories, and he has thrown sops to many of them throughout his administration — but there is one group that feels overlooked.

“After a largely alien-free first 12 months, the president has committed himself to UFO disclosure in 2026,” wrote The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt on Sunday. “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.”

Gabbatt added, “UFO watchers have been further buoyed because the president is surrounded by extraterrestrial believers in his professional and personal life.”

Yet this excitement occurs only after more than a year of Trump ignoring issues related to UFOs, and Jordan Flowers — the executive director of the Disclosure Foundation — said they would be “cautiously optimistic that there can be incremental information released that would help us understand what is happening here.” For example, Flowers called for the government to agree to a request made by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fl.) to release 46 Pentagon videos showing UFOs.

“The Disclosure Foundation is hosting an event on UAPs with Mike Rounds, the Republican senator from South Dakota, in Washington in June, which Flowers said could prompt ‘a dramatic sea change in being able to discuss this topic credibly on Capitol Hill,’” Abbott reported.

In her letter to the Defense Department demanding the videos be released, Luna predicted that there would be “a lot of cool stuff” once the government got around to releasing it. Yet as an anonymous Defense Department official told The Guardian, “the Department of War’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is working in close coordination with the White House and across federal agencies to consolidate existing UAP records collections and facilitate the expeditious release of never-before-seen UAP information.”

AARO currently carries a caseload of more than 2,000 reports of UFO sightings dating back to 1945, the end of World War II and beginning of the Cold War. All of the reports were submitted by military personnel, pilots and/or government employees. In addition to AARO in the United States, there are UFO investigation programs run by the governments of Brazil, Canada, France and Japan.

There are even high-ranking lawmakers on the Democratic side calling for Trump to be transparent about UFOs. Last year Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer challenged President Donald Trump to release information about UFOs, tweeting “now do UFOs” in terms of Trump declassifying important top secret documents.

“Keep in mind that declassification doesn’t necessarily come with explanations,” Haley Morris, co-founder of the military pilot-led nonprofit Americans for Safe Aerospace, the world's largest UAP advocacy organization, told this journalist for Salon Magazine in 2025. Morris added that the “best case is that with transparency, people can see the UAP mystery for themselves and hard data is made available for the scientific community to try and get some answers.”

Back in 1972 during Richard Nixon's presidency, the late astronaut Eugene Cernan became the 11th person — and the last — to walk on the moon. Cernan, who passed away in 2017, commanded the Apollo 17 mission and is remembered as an historic figure in space travel. And during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, astronaut Alan Shepard famously played golf on the moon.

But golfer Bryson DeChambeau, a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, is questioning the authenticity of moon landing footage from the early 1970s.

DeChambeau voiced what Daily Beast reporter Cameron Adams describes as a "wild conspiracy theory" during a Tuesday, May 19 appearance on the podcast hosted by far-right Trump ally Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller.

When Katie Miller asked DeChambeau if he believed Trump played golf on the moon, he responded, "I don't know."

DeChambeau said of the moon landing footage, "I don't think the footage is real. But I think we did go to the moon. I don't know about the footage. It's quite…. it's quite wild."

DeChambeau referenced billionaire SpaceX/Tesla leader Elon Musk, telling Katie Miller that if Musk believes American astronauts landed on the moon in the early 1970s, that's good enough for him.

The golfer argued, "Look, Elon says we've definitely gone there. So I tend to go that route, because he's the man that knows quite a bit about all that. Artemis just went around the moon. So, I do believe if we spent a lot of our resources like they say we did, I think we did."

Nonetheless, DeChambeau questioned the authenticity of the moon landing footage.

Adams notes, however, that the footage's authenticity has been repeatedly verified over the years.

"Despite the claims of conspiracy theorists," Adams explains, "the moon landings are the most verified achievement in history, according to NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration), with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographing Apollo sites, astronaut paths, and equipment left decades ago."

DeChambeau, Adams points out, explored other conspiracy theories during his appearance on Katie Miller's podcast.

The golfer and Trump ally told her, "I do believe in UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena), UFOs. I think they're more than just aliens from another world. They may be aliens from another world, but I think there’s more to that story."

Katie Miller's podcast has attracted a long list of prominent MAGA Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana).