Biden administration forming team to study unidentified aerial objects – live

Justin Trudeau calls UFO ‘a very serious situation we are taking incredibly seriously’

The Toronto Star has more details from Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s public comments on the mysterious UFO shot down over Canada this weekend.

“This is a very serious situation that we are taking incredibly seriously,” Trudeau said, emphasizing “the importance of defending our territorial integrity, our sovereignty”.

The UFO shot down over the Yukon territory this weekend “marked the first time the North American Aerospace Defence Command, Norad for short, fired at an object over the continent”, the Toronto Star reported.

‘So many briefings, so little time’: senators will get classified briefing on UFOs

Are you curious about recent developments on UFOs and Chinese spy balloons? Do repeated statements from White House officials that there is “no indication of aliens” in these UFO encounters leave you with questions?

You’re not the only one. But members of the US Senate may get a few additional answers on these airborne mystery objects, in a classified briefing about UFOs on Tuesday, and a broader briefing about China on Wednesday.

Trump team insults Biden in response to claim they missed Chinese spy balloons

This is Lois Beckett, picking up today’s live politics and UFO coverage from Los Angeles, one of the US cities most vulnerable to alien attacks, at least according to our film industry.

During a briefing this afternoon, John Kirby, a Biden administration national security council spokesperson, said that a Chinese spy balloon program was active during the Trump administration, “but they did not detect it.”

Donald Trump and several of his national security officials, including John Bolton, have previously denied that assertion, with Bolton claiming that he never heard of any such incident and could “say with 100% certainty” they had not taken place, Axios reported. The former Trump national security advisor challenged the Biden administration to present any “specific examples” of Trump-era Chinese spy balloons to congress.

A reporter from the Washington Examiner provided a new response to Kirby’s remarks from a Trump campaign spokesperson today:

In the Senate, top Republican Mitch McConnell is criticizing the Biden administration for not being transparent about what American fighter jets encountered in the skies over the United States and Canada:

Keep in mind that Republicans also attacked Biden for waiting until the Chinese spy balloon discovered earlier in February was over the Atlantic before shooting it down. Then, the White House argued that if it was blown up over land, it could harm people or property below. It appears the UFOs were shot down as they were discovered.

The Guardian’s Lois Beckett is taking over this blog from here on out, and will keep you updated on the latest UFO news for the remainder of the day.

When it came time to fire architect of the Capitol Brett Blanton after several allegations of misconduct, Joe Biden’s White House didn’t beat around the bush.

Here’s the letter sent to Blanton and obtained by Politico:

No debris from the three UFOs shot down over the weekend has been recovered, defense secretary Lloyd Austin says, as reported by CNBC:

One was shot down over Lake Huron, which separates the United States and Canada, another over Canada’s Yukon territory and a third over the US state of Alaska.

Joe Biden has now fired Brett Blanton, the architect of the Capitol, the federal agency responsible for the maintenance, operation, development, and preservation of the US Capitol complex in Washington, DC.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had earlier led Republican calls Blanton’s resignation as the head of the agency.

New York congressman and Democrat Joe Morelle, ranking member on the Committee on House Administration, just tweeted out this statemement:

“After being given the opportunity to respond to numerous allegations of legal, ethical, and administrative violations, and failing to directly respond, the president has removed Mr Brett Blanton from his position – a decision I firmly stand behind. President Biden did the right thing and heeded my call for action. I look forward to working with my colleagues to begin a search for a new Architect immediately.”

Blanton has faced a number of allegations of wrongdoing, which grew worse last week when he admitted to lawmakers that he avoided going to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, during the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, who wanted to try to overturn the-then president’s loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

He’s departing seven years before his job term is up and Politico notes that: “He faced a crescendo of criticism following a heated oversight hearing last week that centered on an internal watchdog report that catalogued his broad misuse of department resources.”

Kirby says the shot down objects had no propulsion or communications

One of the most interesting things that came out of the briefing was a few hints at what the most recently shot down objects were like. Or more accurately, what they were not doing – which was apparently communicating with anything or moving under their own power.

“These objects were not being maneuvered. They did not appear to have any self propulsion. So the likely hypothesis is, they were being moved by the prevailing winds,” Kirby said.

Its a start…

The White House press briefing has finished, but here’s one moment with John Kirby that’s not to be missed, and which likely will be satirized for days to come:

China is a talking point as much as ever in Washington these days, but John Kirby said Joe Biden has no plans to talk to Xi Jinping.

“I don’t have a call to talk about today,” the national security council spokesman said.

However, he noted the two men met at the G20 summit in Indonesia in November, and downplayed the impact of the cancelation of secretary of state’s Antony Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing after the spy balloon was discovered over the United States.

“People shouldn’t take away from this that all communication has been severed between the United States and China, that Beijing and Washington aren’t talking,” Kirby said. “We still have an embassy there. We still have an ability through secretary Blinken’s good offices to communicate with senior Chinese leaders. Unfortunately, the Chinese military is not interested in talking to secretary of defense (Lloyd) Austin, but there are still ways to communicate and the president would tell you that now’s exactly the time to at least preserve some of those lines of communication, so that we can avoid miscalculation or set back the relationship.”

The navy is in the process of recovering the Chinese surveillance balloon downed off South Carolina’s coast, but finding its remains may take a while.

“It could take a long time, given the sea state and weather conditions and the degree to which … we have to protect the safety of the divers,” national security council spokesman John Kirby said.

Divers have already made some progress, he said. “They were able to take things off the surface, like, the next day, actually, that afternoon, some of the balloon fabric. And in the day since they have been able to recover some, not all, of the payload that sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. It’s in about 45 feet of water. Weather conditions are pretty tough off the coast right now. Today, for instance, they have not been able to get into the water and dive on it. But over the course of the weekend, they were able to raise some of the debris, including some of the electronics and some of the structure.”

The White House will have its experts sit down to try and understand the unknown objects discovered flying over North America, John Kirby announces.

“The president, through his national security adviser, has today directed an interagency team to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks,” the national security council spokesman said.

Then he gets into the shootdowns this weekend, and why the public still doesn’t know what the fighter jets encountered.

“We have no specific reason to suspect that they were conducting surveillance of any kind, (but) we couldn’t rule that out,” Kirby said. “Efforts are actively under way right now at all sites to find what is left of those objects so that we can better understand and communicate with the American people what they are. I think it’s important to remind you objects in Alaska and Canada are in pretty remote terrain, ice and wilderness, all of that making it difficult to find them in winter weather. The object over Lake Huron now lies in what is probably very deep water.”

Kirby said, “There are no active tracks today, but the professionals at NORAD will continue to do their important work.”