Sen. Chuck Schumer: “Now do UFOs.” — January 23, 2025
Source: Sen. Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer), X/Twitter Date: January 23, 2025 Original tweet URL: https://x.com/senschumer/status/1882555171596804472 Reddit propagation: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1i8g3i7/ (score 14,797, “legislation-hearing” flair) Sourced: 2026-05-18
A three-word post by the Senate Minority Leader in direct response to Trump’s January 23, 2025 executive order calling for declassification of the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassination records. Substantively a politicized one-liner, but it documents the Schumer-as-disclosure-anchor pattern: the senator who co-authored the UAP Disclosure Act using the JFK-records EO as a public hook to keep UAP disclosure on Trump’s agenda.
Verbatim text
“Now do UFOs.”
(Quote-replying to news of Trump’s JFK records EO.)
Context — January 23, 2025
Three days into the second Trump administration:
- January 20, 2025: Trump inaugurated. Day-1 actions include announcing he will “find out about the drone scare” (referring to the December 2024 East Coast drone flap, see december-2024-east-coast-drone-flap)
- January 23, 2025: Trump signs the JFK records executive order, mandating release of “all” records from the JFK assassination collection (with some exclusions). Followed by Schumer’s tweet within hours.
Schumer’s framing is calculated. By piggybacking on a high-profile records-release EO that Trump is taking credit for, Schumer:
- Signals continued personal investment in UAP disclosure — the topic he attached his name to via the Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Act (2023)
- Creates a public dare: if Trump claims credit for JFK records release as a transparency win, declining to do the same for UAP becomes a visible inconsistency
- Costs Schumer almost nothing: a three-word tweet that the disclosure-friendly base will appreciate, and that Trump cannot easily mock without appearing to oppose the very transparency framing he just championed
This is a useful pattern instance: public-pressure on the Trump administration to operationalize UAP disclosure using the administration’s own rhetoric.
Connection to the eventual Trump UAP directive
The eventual Trump UAP disclosure directive (trump-uap-disclosure-directive-2026-02-20) was issued 13 months later, on February 19, 2026. The intervening period saw continued Schumer-driven pressure including:
- Continued Senate floor commentary
- The UAP Transparency Act (HR 1187) introduced
- Multiple “where are the UAP files” amplification moments
Schumer’s “Now do UFOs” tweet is the rhetorical opening shot of the second-Trump-administration UAP-disclosure pressure campaign. The framework Mellon described on 60 Minutes (public → Congress → DoD, see cbs-60-minutes-uap-2021-05-16) operates here at the public-to-administration interface.
Substantive content vs. rhetorical content
What this tweet establishes:
- Schumer’s continued public commitment to UAP disclosure as a personal political position (he is not letting the topic go after the Schumer-Rounds UAPDA was stripped in 2023)
- A new-administration-era public-pressure tactic
What this tweet does not establish:
- Substantive new information about UAPs
- Any specific records Schumer wants released
- Any commitment from the Trump administration
The tweet is rhetorical leverage, not evidence. Worth capturing because it documents the political-pressure timeline on UAP disclosure that connects 2023 (UAPDA passage and stripping) → 2024 (NARA records collection) → 2025 (this tweet) → 2026 (Trump directive).
Cross-references
- trump-uap-disclosure-directive-2026-02-20 — the eventual Trump February 2026 response
- congressional-action — broader disclosure-attempts timeline
- december-2024-east-coast-drone-flap — context for the political moment
- uap-disclosure-act-2023 — the legislation Schumer co-authored that was stripped