\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think that younger people are more\u2014we have more tech that we\u2019re able to access whereas historically the government did kind of try to silo this information and gaslight people,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so I think right now the aspect of, \u2018Hey, maybe we\u2019re not the only thing out there\u2019 is a very real question that many people ask themselves, and the stigma doesn\u2019t seem to be as strong with the younger generation starting with Gen X onward.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president, in announcing the declassification of the UFO files, made a similar acknowledgement. \u201cI thought I\u2019d save it for this crowd,\u201d Trump told the young conservative<\/a> audience at a Turning Point USA event in April, \u201cbecause you\u2019re a little bit out-there.\u201d Doubling down on his outreach, he recently posted an AI-generated meme<\/a> of himself and Secret Service officers escorting an alien in handcuffs.<\/p>\n The congresswoman, however, insists that the UFO question has more wide-reaching appeal. \u201cThe UAP topic specifically is one of the biggest, most bicameral and bipartisan things in Washington, DC,\u201d she said, pointing to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s starring role in a 2023 hearing with intelligence whistleblowers who claimed that the federal government is covering up UAP and alien activity.<\/p>\n In endorsing Luna for reelection on his Truth Social platform last year, Trump described her as a \u201cMAGA Warrior\u201d and \u201cWINNER.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Logan Cyrus\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Luna also referenced former president Barack Obama\u2019s comments on a February podcast in which he seemed to confirm the existence of aliens, before later clarifying that he had seen \u201cno evidence\u201d of them and was speaking somewhat in jest.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have Barack Obama and President Trump on the same page on something, you know you\u2019re cooking,\u201d Luna said. While perhaps an oversimplification of the 44th president\u2019s position on extraterrestrials, her point speaks to the persistence of the topic as a cultural phenomenon. Even if, as with the JFK, RFK, and MLK files, the UFO materials released so far have offered little in the way of concrete revelation, they can feed subtler appetites. \u201cThe importance of this release is primarily psychological,\u201d Harvard physicist Avi Loeb told Fox Weather<\/em> after the initial dump. \u201cIt brings this subject to the mainstream of discussion both publicly but also within science.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n