The disclosure-act trajectory: Schumer–Rounds, year by year
From the August 2023 introduction through the December 2023 partial passage and the FY2025 reauthorisation cycle: how a major intelligence-records reform actually moves through Congress.
The UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 — introduced as a manager's amendment to the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) — is the most ambitious intelligence-records-reform effort attempted in Congress since the JFK Records Act of 1992. Tracking its trajectory through the FY2024 cycle, the FY2025 cycle, and the FY2026 cycle in progress reveals more about how the institutional record will continue to evolve than any single hearing does.
The original August 2023 text
The original Schumer–Rounds language, introduced on August 15, 2023 (S.Amdt. 797 to S.2226), contained four substantive provisions. First, federal eminent domain over 'any non-Earth origin or exotic Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena material' in any non-government custody, exercisable through the Department of Defense. Second, establishment of a nine-member presidential review board (the UAP Records Review Board), modelled on the JFK Records Act review board, with subpoena authority and a twenty-five-year automatic-declassification mandate. Third, a presumption of immediate disclosure for UAP-related records, with the burden of proof on the agency to justify continued classification. Fourth, anti-reprisal protections for executive-branch personnel making protected UAP disclosures.
The first two provisions were unusually aggressive for an NDAA manager's amendment. The eminent-domain clause would have authorised the federal government to compel transfer of UAP-related material from private custody — a reach extending to defense contractors, aerospace primes, and any private entity in possession of relevant material. The review-board provision would have created the first independent declassification authority since the JFK board's wind-down in 1998.
The conference committee strip-down
Between the August 2023 introduction and the December 2023 conference-committee report, the Schumer–Rounds provisions were substantially attenuated. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — chaired by Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) — moved to strip the eminent-domain provision in conference; the final conference text retained an attenuated records-collection requirement but removed the categorical assertion of federal eminent domain over private UAP material.
The review-board provision was similarly cut. The final FY2024 NDAA, signed into law December 22, 2023, retained the records-collection framework but removed the independent presidential-review-board mechanism. The remaining language directs AARO to establish a records-collection unit and to provide quarterly progress reports to the congressional defence and intelligence committees.
Sen. Schumer's floor statement on December 13, 2023 named the conference-committee outcome as a setback and committed to reintroducing the stripped provisions in the next cycle. Sen. Rounds, who as a Senate Armed Services Committee member had championed the bipartisan original, joined the floor statement.
The FY2025 cycle
Schumer reintroduced the original eminent-domain and review-board provisions as part of the FY2025 NDAA cycle in July 2024 (S.4748). The House Intelligence Committee, again under Chairman Turner, again moved to strip the provisions in conference. The final FY2025 NDAA, signed into law December 23, 2024, did include several attenuated UAP provisions: expanded AARO whistleblower protections, a mandate for quarterly congressional briefings on the AARO records-collection backlog, and statutory authorisation for the AARO Director to compel inter-agency cooperation on declassification reviews. The Schumer eminent-domain and review-board provisions were again excluded.
The pattern through both cycles is consistent: bipartisan Senate support for the original provisions, House Intelligence Committee opposition to the most-aggressive provisions, conference-committee compromise that retains the AARO institutional buildout while removing the independent oversight mechanisms. The Senate has, twice, gone on the record in support of the original text; the House Intelligence Committee has, twice, blocked it.
The FY2026 cycle and PURSUE
The FY2026 NDAA cycle in progress as of May 2026 is the third bite. Schumer has signalled an intent to reintroduce the original provisions; Rounds, now positioned as a senior SASC voice in his second term, is the principal Republican advocate. The complicating factor is the Trump administration's parallel PURSUE — Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters — programme, which executes some of the declassification-cadence work that the Schumer review-board provision was designed to force.
Whether PURSUE substitutes for the legislative declassification mechanism or simply runs alongside it is the open question of the FY2026 cycle. Schumer's position has been that PURSUE is welcome but is not a substitute for the statutory review-board mechanism, because executive-branch programmes can be terminated by subsequent administrations while statutory mechanisms cannot. PURSUE's advocates inside the administration take the opposing view: that the executive cadence makes the legislative mechanism redundant.
What the trajectory shows
Three observations from the three-cycle arc. First, the Schumer–Rounds language has been bipartisan from the start; this is not a partisan project. Second, the House Intelligence Committee's opposition is institutional, not personal — the resistance has held across two NDAA cycles and is unlikely to soften without a forcing event. Third, the legislative reform mechanism and the executive declassification mechanism are now in active tension, and the resolution of that tension over the FY2026 cycle will determine the structural shape of the public UAP record for the rest of the decade.
The Schumer–Rounds eminent-domain provision, if it ever passes in its original form, would be the largest single intervention in the modern UAP record. Its repeated reintroduction is the most consequential ongoing legislative story in this space — and is also, by some distance, the most under-covered.