Elizabeth Vargas is an American journalist and host of Elizabeth Vargas Reports, NewsNation's weeknight 7 p.m. news program, which she has anchored since April 2023. She spent more than two decades at ABC News, including a stint as co-anchor of World News Tonight and many years on 20/20. Her connection to unidentified anomalous phenomena is through her show, which has covered the disclosure story steadily since 2024.

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1962, Vargas graduated from the University of Missouri's journalism school in 1984 and worked at stations in Reno, Phoenix, and Chicago before joining NBC News in 1993. She moved to ABC in 1996, reading news on Good Morning America, and went on to anchor World News Tonight Sunday and co-anchor 20/20. In January 2006 she became co-anchor of World News Tonight, leaving that role in May of the same year. She shared in an Emmy for coverage of the Elián González story and a Peabody for ABC's coverage of Hurricane Sandy.

Vargas has spoken publicly about anxiety and alcoholism, entering treatment in 2013 and describing her recovery in the 2016 bestselling memoir Between Breaths. She left ABC in 2018 for A&E, hosted a 2021 revival of America's Most Wanted and the syndicated iCrime, and joined NewsNation as a guest anchor in 2022 before her own show premiered. At the network she moderated a 2023 town hall with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., co-hosted a Republican presidential debate, and moved to the 7 p.m. slot under a multi-year deal in 2025.

UAP segments have been a recurring part of her program. In January 2024 Ross Coulthart analyzed a classified congressional briefing on her show, and in 2026 she hosted Rep. Eric Burlison, who suggested foreign adversaries might be behind the deaths and disappearances of scientists; Rep. Tim Burchett, who said his own inquiry had been thwarted; retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet on the first official file release; and producer Dan Farah, who said the released videos barely scratched the surface. Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell publicly thanked her for keeping the subject on the air.

Vargas's significance in the UAP record is as a veteran network anchor who gave the disclosure debate sustained airtime on a national newscast. Her program is among the NewsNation shows that made the network the leading cable outlet for congressional and whistleblower UAP stories.