It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.

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Photo by Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

A BRIEF LOOK INTO THE OBJECTS (NO LONGER) HIGH IN THE SKY
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage ([link removed])
Senior Editor, Digital

It’s been more than two weeks since the nation was fixated on four separate shootdowns of aerial items, including a Chinese spy balloon, over North American airspace.

We still do not know precisely what was in the sky. But we do know some things.

We would like to take a minute to look at where the information on the flying objects stands, according to officials who spoke with the PBS NewsHour and other reporters in the past two weeks.

What are these things? Not UFOs. “It’s not from outer space,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters after a classified briefing for senators on Tuesday. “There is no serious discussion that this is some sort of extraterrestrial contact. And you’d think if they did, they’d use something more sophisticated than a balloon.”

The White House has previously stated that the latest three aerial objects bore no indication of “aliens or extraterrestrial activity.” ([link removed]) And these objects likely had a “benign purpose,” ([link removed]) said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

The first object, which was shot down just off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, was a large balloon. The Pentagon said it was a Chinese surveillance balloon ([link removed].) .

Days later, the U.S. military downed three additional unidentified flying objects over a three-day period:
* One over the Arctic Ocean ([link removed]) near Alaska on Feb. 10.
* One over the Yukon Territory ([link removed]) in Canada on Feb. 11.
* One over Lake Huron ([link removed]) , near the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on Feb. 12.


Administration officials, including President Joe Biden, have been making a distinction between those three aerial objects and the first one, which is believed to have been part of a Chinese military program.

“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were,” the president said last week ([link removed]) . “But nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from … any other country.”

How large are these flying objects? Apparently smaller than a small car, possibly larger than a person.

“Very, very small,” said Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, after Tuesday’s briefing.

I asked, “Smaller than a car?” Risch responded, “Much smaller than a car.”

Fellow reporters and I then asked: A stroller? A bread box? A stove? No response. Then I asked, “Smaller than a human?” Risch then replied, “I wouldn’t say that. … They are very small stuff."

But the three objects appeared to be smaller than the 200-foot-tall Chinese spy balloon that was brought down off the coast of South Carolina. Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command, said in a briefing that the balloon was also carrying a jetliner-sized payload ([link removed]) .
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A Feb. 1 photo of the Chinese spy balloon spotted in the sky over Billings, Montana. Photo by Chase Doak via Reuters

While the spy balloon was recovered, the search operations for the three other objects shot down were concluded after no debris was recovered ([link removed]) .

Were the additional objects threats? “No, I don’t think so,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.

Is it just space junk? “I don’t know,” Graham said.

Do we know if these objects are connected to one another? “It’s not clear to me,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.

Yes, but what are these objects specifically? “They’re not at a stage where they can categorically identify them,” Tillis told reporters.

What does this mean about our awareness of our airspace? “This is a new phenomenon,” Risch said. “We have really good eyes on everything that happens up to about 60,000 feet. We have really good eyes on things that happen near space … [but this area in between] has not been focused on by militaries around the world for a long time."

“We have built large, sophisticated and complex systems that are principally designed to see missiles and planes,” Coons said. “If you take a second to think about it, they’re not designed to see slow-moving balloons.”

“We weren’t looking for those types of things for quite some time until now. Everything has been changed to pick it all up,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., told reporters.

What could shooting down these objects do? It “may have a calming influence on other people that [launch them],” Tillis suggested.

Should the White House be sharing more information? Yes, some lawmakers say.

“I’ve been getting very good briefings from the military” as it relates particularly to operations in Alaska, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, told a large group of reporters. “But throughout this, the administration needs to be more transparent. … They can say what they know and don’t know. … It’s not sources and methods. The American people are intelligent and mature, let them know."
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Watch the Washington Week segment in the player above.

Other lawmakers said to give the White House time.

“If I were advising the president on this, I’d say ‘Wait until you’ve got clarity about what’s happening and a clear path forward about what we will do and should do,’” said Coons, who occasionally advises the Biden White House.

Late last week, Biden said the U.S. was developing “sharper rules” ([link removed]) to track and monitor unidentified aerial objects.

What do senators think this means about China, which we know sent that one large balloon?

The spy balloon from China — the first object that jump-started weeks of questions around national security and whatever’s in the sky — is serious business ([link removed]) .

“It seems like there’s an escalation building up to where they’re pushing the boundaries more than what we’d like,” Manchin said of China.

As for the other objects, one person was much less surprised by the frenzy. Paul Fetkowitz, president of Kaymont Consolidated, the largest provider of meteorological balloons to the U.S. government, told WBUR’s Here & Now ([link removed]) that on any given day, there are hundreds of balloons floating over the country.

“There’s a lot going on up there to benefit us down here,” he said of balloons used for a few different reasons, including for research and data. “It’s all about protection of property and life safety.”
More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: We’re still a year away from the first presidential primary contests, but the Republican field is officially taking shape. South Carolina became an early focal point ([link removed]) for the 2024 election in the past week.
* One Big Question: In another key state — Michigan — Republicans voted to make a well-known election denier their new party chairman. Where else in the nation are election deniers running Republican state parties?
* A Closer Look: The Supreme Court is taking up a pair of similar cases ([link removed]) with the potential to revolutionize how social media companies operate. Marcia Coyle, a legal analyst at the National Law Journal, breaks down the two cases.
* Perspectives: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart discuss the new details ([link removed]) in a lawsuit against Fox News and its 2020 election fraud claims.

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Ali Schmitz, @SchmitzMedia ([link removed])
Politics Producer

As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, President Joe Biden traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on Monday in a show of solidarity ([link removed]) .

Biden spent more than five hours meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. embassy staff in the country. The visit took months of planning by administration officials, and was a closely held secret for several months.

Our question: Who was the first president to travel internationally while in office?

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Only one U.S. president has actually married on White House grounds. Can you name the president and his bride?

The answer: President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom ([link removed]) at the White House. To date, Cleveland is the only U.S. president to marry there. The wedding took place in the Blue Room ([link removed]) in 1886.

Congratulations to our winners: Amanda Payne and Deborah Potter!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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