Forecasters said the weather around Washington is likely to be hot and stormy.
The left is absolutely outraged about the UFC Freedom 250 fight that is happening at the White House next week. The post Marco Rubio Cracks Up Crowd at the State Department Talking About the UFC Freedom 250 Fight at the White House (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
While miserable leftists back home are filing desperate 11th-hour lawsuits to kill the fun and shut down the historic UFC Freedom 250 on the White House South Lawn, Secretary of State Marco Rubio just revealed the real story: the entire world wants in. The post Marco Rubio Says Foreign Leaders Are Begging to Attend Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 at the White House — Jokes It Could Trigger a “Diplomatic Crisis” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The socialist who has Zohran Mamdani's endorsement to oust Rep. Adriano Espaillat in a New York City Democratic congressional primary co-created a bizarre, DEI-crazed college course that advocated for abolishing schools, which it accused of fueling "genocide," "white supremacy," and "settler colonialism," among other ills. The post The Nutty Professor: Socialist in Close House Race Taught Ultra-Woke College Classes on 'Whiteness,' 'Prison Industrial Complex,' and 'Genocidal Practices of the Nationstate' appeared first on .
The Sunshine State is raining on the college sports parade. The legislature erased funding for “preeminent” universities in a special session, following an aggressive fiscal trend that reduced subsidies from $100 million two years ago to $40 million last year. Schools have ostensibly used preeminence dollars to hire faculty, expand student services, and boost campus […]
Oil prices have defied predictions of even bigger increases than we've seen — but the markets' shock absorbers could easily wear out later this summer unless the Strait of Hormuz opens soon, analysts warn.Why it matters: If the stockpiles run too low and oil prices surge, prices at the pump — which have been falling lately — could spike again as the midterm elections approach.And buffers against economically devastating shortages in major importing countries are also at risk.The latest: President Trump said Thursday that a deal with Iran is imminent, but the outlook changed so many times in the course of one day that it could easily change again.The oil markets seem to think it might happen, though, as oil is trading around its lowest levels in three months.The global benchmark Brent crude is trading at $87.94 this morning.Threat level: At some point, stockpiles will fall too low to keep easing the market, and other measures won't be able to offset the loss of barrels flowing through the strait.That point could be coming soon. A recent note from investment firm Macquarie estimates that if the strait is still closed on Labor Day, Brent crude prices could be $130-$150."If the war continues into 2027, prices of ~$200 may be needed to balance supply and demand," it projects.Oil and gas executives told the Washington Post that some inventories could be depleted within weeks.How it works: Storage can't go to zero. Sludgy oil at tank bottoms is not usable, pipelines need certain amounts to maintain function, and refineries need minimum stocks.State of play: U.S. stockpiles, both private and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, are dwindling fast. They're falling in a number of other nations, too."The world has been relying on inventories to kind of manage the supply disruption, but ... that can't last forever," Aaron Brady, a top analyst with the research and consulting firm S&P Global Energy, said in an interview.What they're saying: "If the strait is not reopened in, call it the next month or so, those inventories are going to get, we think, towards those minimum operating levels in the U.S., perhaps other places as well," Brady said."When that happens, you don't have that supply buffer, and that's a recipe for upward pressure on oil prices, including gasoline prices," he said.Veteran analyst Daniel Pickering of the investment firm Pickering Energy Partners, in the firm's latest video explainer, said U.S. storage could start to scrape operational minimums "toward the end" of summer.The big picture: Before the war, global oil inventories were rising as production grew faster than demand.It's one of the biggest reasons that while oil prices have soared, they have stopped well short of dire predictions of $150 per barrel or even much higher.Other buffers include China's import decline, Saudi Arabia and some other producers moving more through pipelines, some tankers getting through, and governments' use of strategic reserves.Zoom in: U.S. commercial crude storage levels fell by over 7 million barrels to 426.5 million the week ending June 5, per federal data.These commercial supplies are draining fast even as the Trump administration has provided the market with oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.The intrigue: One reason for the U.S. inventory decline is rising U.S. oil exports.They're going into a global market that needs barrels to help offset the Strait of Hormuz bottleneck.But Trump administration officials have said they're not considering restrictions on U.S. shipments abroad.Reality check: The global oil system has proven surprisingly flexible in the face of an unprecedented disruption, so it's hard for experts to know what's next with any precision.The bottom line: S&P Global Energy points out that inventories in the critical Midwest and Gulf Coast refining markets are currently at 351 million barrels.A "danger zone" starts when they get down to around 325 million, the firm estimates."As inventories drop below this threshold, the market becomes increasingly vulnerable to logistical bottlenecks and price spikes," the firm said in a note Thursday.Sign up here for Axios' Future of Energy newsletter.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event slated to be held at the White House on Sunday is underwater with a majority of Americans, many of whom have bombarded its promotional posts with references to Jeffrey Epstein, Axios reported Friday.According to a survey of more than 9,200 adults conducted by YouGov, 51% of Americans either “somewhat” or “strongly” disapprove of the event, officially labeled UFC Freedom 250 and scheduled for Trump's 80th birthday.Only 27% approve, and 22% indicated that they were “not sure.” Fans have peppered UFC posts promoting the event with brutal reminders of some of the Trump administration’s biggest controversies.“Even within the UFC's Trump-friendly fan base, the alliance is showing cracks: Fans have flooded promotional posts with complaints about Israel, the Epstein files and other perceived populist betrayals by Trump,” read Axios’ report.The Justice Department's botched handling of its release of Epstein-related files has continued to plague the Trump administration, with the president's favorability reaching historic lows.The event has already sparked waves of controversy, including fresh legal challenges, in which the complainants allege the event is a “volcano of corruption” that Trump and his allies stand to profit from.Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer, described the event recently as “ludicrous” and emblematic of “the way [Trump] has defaced Washington, D.C.”
Dana White likes to say he sells "holy sh*t moments for a living." Sunday night, the UFC CEO will attempt his magnum opus on the biggest stage in combat sports history.Why it matters: The UFC and President Trump have forged one of the most successful cultural alliances in modern politics, carrying mixed martial arts (MMA) from the fringe of American sports to a starring role in the country's 250th anniversary.Zoom in: For Trump, the UFC was a lifeline after the 2020 election and Jan. 6 left him radioactive to corporate America.White brought Trump cageside — reintroducing him as an anti-establishment icon to the young, male-heavy audience that would help power his 2024 comeback.Trump's instinct at moments of maximum legal vulnerability was to return to the Octagon: days after his first indictment in 2023, he appeared at UFC 287 in Miami; two days after his 2024 guilty verdict, he made his first public appearance at UFC 302 in Newark, N.J.For the UFC, Trump's return has coincided with a cascade of rewards: a $7.7 billion rights deal with Paramount, new partnerships with the FBI and State Department, and now a fight night on the White House's South Lawn.UFC parent company TKO says the event — complete with a massive fan viewing experience on the Ellipse — will cost the UFC more than $60 million and lose money on paper.Still, TKO president Mark Shapiro has called the first professional sporting event ever held at the White House "the greatest earned marketing tool of all time." Photo: Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe big picture: UFC Freedom 250 has been cloaked in controversy and curiosity since well before construction began on the 92-foot-tall steel "Claw" now towering over the South Lawn.1. The sport: To fans, MMA is what Joe Rogan calls "high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences" — a full-body chess match that fuses boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu and pain tolerance into a brutal test of skill, will and nerve.The champions fighting on Sunday, from Georgian-Spaniard Ilia Topuria to Brazil's Alex Pereira, embody the sport's global rise, technical sophistication and cinematic capacity for sudden, fight-ending violence.To critics, MMA remains a bloody spectacle tied to the ugliest strains of hypermasculinity, making its arrival at the White House feel jarring even as the sport has gone mainstream.2. The promotion: The UFC built a global sports empire by functioning as the ultimate market gatekeeper, yielding immense corporate profits even while weathering antitrust lawsuits and allegations of suppressed wages.Beyond the balance sheets, the UFC's internal fairness is routinely warped by executive favoritism — a system of handpicked title shots and corporate protection that fans openly mock as "Dana White privilege."This transactional playbook has long aligned the UFC with authoritarian regimes that use combat sports for image laundering, adding a sharp layer of irony to a company now wrapped in the flag of American pageantry.3. The event: White insists the card will be patriotic, not political, promising to "tell the story of America" through historical vignettes between fights. But almost every logistical and financial detail points back to one man.The rare Sunday fight, a break from the UFC's patented Saturday rhythm, will fall on Flag Day — which happens to be Trump's 80th birthday.It's branded through Trump's Freedom 250 universe and accompanied by commemorative coins bearing his face, priced up to nearly $12,000. Trump personally controls roughly 1,400 of the 4,300 South Lawn seats.Asked why MMA is the first sport to make it to the White House, White told reporters: "It's one of the president's favorite sports, so that helps." Trump with UFC fighters (from left) Alex Pereira, Ilia Topuria, Justin Gaethje and Cyril Gane. Photo: Scott Taetsch/Zuffa LLCBetween the lines: The public isn't sold: A YouGov poll found 51% of Americans disapprove and just 17% approve of UFC Freedom 250.A watchdog group has sued to stop the event, arguing the administration approved a private spectacle on federal parkland without proper review. Even within the UFC's Trump-friendly fan base, the alliance is showing cracks: Fans have flooded promotional posts with complaints about Israel, the Epstein files and other perceived populist betrayals by Trump.The bottom line: The UFC's journey to the White House lawn mirrors the president's own improbable rise.In 1996, the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) urged all 50 U.S. governors to ban the "barbaric" UFC in its infancy, likening the sport to "human cockfighting."At the time, Trump was a casino mogul and tabloid fixture, refining the same instincts for provocation, spectacle and survival that would later vault him to the presidency.White has long cast Trump as one of the few powerful figures who saw value in the UFC when polite America recoiled: "Nobody took us seriously," White often says. "Except Donald Trump."
The towering claw will be the site of an Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match on Sunday, which is President Trump’s 80th birthday.