“I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her,” President Donald Trump announced recently on Truth Social, pulling one of America’s most enduring legends into the political present. For more than eight decades, Earhart’s 1937 disappearance has been fertile ground for speculation: pulp stories, Hollywood films, and best-selling books that turned a tragic accident into lurid melodrama or unsolved mystery.

Underlying all these tales is the idea that Washington concealed the truth, a narrative that has never withstood serious scrutiny. Aviation historians are nearly unanimous: Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ran out of fuel over the Pacific. The ocean swallowed the Lockheed Electra, as it had countless other planes. Earhart’s own family’s Bible records, which I saw firsthand while researching my recent biography of Earhart, put it plainly: “Lost at sea about July 4-5-6, 1937, in the Pacific.” Earhart wanted to be remembered for her courage, her flying, and her work on behalf of women. But she has also become something else: a national ghost story, repurposed for every era.