Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, is pushing legislation to create a commission with broad authority to declassify government documents about U.F.O.s and extraterrestrial matters, in an attempt to force the government to share all that it knows about unidentified phenomena.
The measure offers the possibility of pushing back against the conspiracy theories that surround discussions of U.F.O.s and fears that the government is hiding critical information from the public.
The legislation, which Mr. Schumer will introduce as an amendment to the annual defense policy bill, has bipartisan support, including that of Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, and Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who has championed legislation that has forced the government to release a series of reports on unidentified phenomena.
Support in the House is also likely. On Wednesday, the chamber included a narrower measure in its version of the annual defense bill that would push the Pentagon to release documents about unidentified aerial phenomena.
(While the government has agreed not to call mysterious sightings U.F.O.s, various branches and agencies disagree on whether to refer to aerial phenomena or anomalous phenomena.)
The Senate measure sets a 300-day deadline for government agencies to organize their records on unidentified phenomena and provide them to the review board.
President Biden would appoint the nine-person review board, subject to Senate approval. Senate staff members say the intent is to select a group of people who would push for disclosure while protecting sensitive intelligence collection methods.
Interest in U.F.O.s has always been high, but it has grown even more since a collection of videos showing unidentified phenomena recorded by military sensors was made public and naval aviators described…