Who Gets the Aliens in the Divorce?

Posted 11/01/2026 · ← All field reports

Full disclosure: this is commentary and jokes. Facts come from the linked reports, so click through and judge for yourself. The party kits linked here are our own products.

The candy bowl is empty, the costumes are back in the closet and the midterms are Tuesday. Naturally, Washington has spent the weekend arguing over who gets to keep the UFOs. Meanwhile a former Pentagon UFO boss is side-eyeing an FBI sighting, a whole fleet of politicians saluted the U.S. Navy with somebody else's ships and Bigfoot finally got his glamour shot. Open the folder.

Exhibit A: The great UFO custody battle

According to the New York Post, House Democrats are gearing up to form their own UFO caucus and select committee if they win the House, replacing the Republican-led Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets run by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. Rep. Andre Carson told the Post the administration has "slow walked" UAP disclosure and is sitting on a historical UAP report. The Hill has its own rundown, and when Rep. Jasmine Crockett was asked about a select UFO committee, she told Ask a Pol UAP, "Um, I think so."

Let's enjoy this. For decades, saying "UFO" on Capitol Hill was a great way to get uninvited from the good fundraisers. Now both parties want full custody of the aliens and every other weekend with the Roswell debris. If the little gray guys are watching, they are learning the most American lesson of all: nobody cared about you until you polled well. Our prediction is that whoever wins, the files will come out "soon," which is the federal government's favorite unit of time.

Exhibit B: The black triangle and the "trust me" problem

Last week's government file release included a 2026 sighting by federal agents of a matte-black triangle that rose over a ridge, hovered and then zipped off, as Axios laid out. Now former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick tells Fox News Digital that the account lacks photos or other supporting evidence, and that treating witnesses as automatically right because of their badges is "a classic case of authority bias." He also says "unresolved" usually means not enough data, not little green men.

Here's what makes this delicious for skeptics on every side. Believers are told to trust the government. Then the government says the agents saw something wild. Then a former government UFO chief says don't trust the government agents too much. And the War Department says it won't assess the files at all, so "the American people can make up their own minds." So we will. Read the actual report, notice what's missing and decide for yourself. That is the whole game.

Exhibit C: Happy birthday, U.S. Navy, here are some Indian frigates

For the Navy's 251st birthday on Oct. 13, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Rep. Tim Moore posted an image that, per India Today and WION, showed three Indian Navy frigates. Before anyone gets smug, San Diego's Democratic mayor Todd Gloria reportedly went with a Soviet-era Russian cruiser that's now a museum ship. The Wall Street Journal's Dave Brown flagged the mix-ups with the immortal reply, "Those are Indian warships."

Truly bipartisan. If anyone ever tells you a shadowy cabal of staffers controls everything, show them this. The cabal can't even pick the right boat from a stock photo site. The real conspiracy is that nobody in these offices has ever heard of a reverse image search.

Exhibit D: Bigfoot in 4K

The team behind the documentary Capturing Bigfoot released a 4K scan of the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film, made from the original 16mm reel with "no enhancements, AI or otherwise," according to ComingSoon. The documentary itself has stirred things up, and Dead of Night Dispatch rounds up both the film's case and the longtime researchers pushing back. Fifty-nine years of arguing, and now we get to argue in higher resolution. Progress.

The pattern on the corkboard

Connect the dots and this week's theme is ownership. Politicians want to own the UFO story, officials want to own what counts as evidence and somebody's social media intern apparently wants to own India's navy. The skeptic move is the same every time: check the source, look at what's actually in the file and ask who benefits when you get excited.

More field reports: The Halloween Files and This Week in Tinfoil.