The White House, the Pentagon, and now the FBI are all saying the same thing: classified documents on UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomena will hit the public "very soon." The machinery of America's most consequential disclosure is turning.

President Trump on Friday teased at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix that he will direct Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to release government files on UFOs and unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs).

Over the last decade, since the work of a shadowy government program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was made public in 2017, there has been growing public pressure on the US government to release its files related to aliens. At the same time, UFOs have been rebranded as Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, or UAP.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist who is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He is the author of “Take Me To Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter.”