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.”
President Donald Trump's birthday celebration on the White House lawn was disparaged as a "volcano of corruption" in a new legal challenge.Attorneys fighting to block this weekend's UFC matches at the White House told a federal judge Wednesday the president and his allies stand to profit from what they called "the first private, for-profit sporting event ever held on White House grounds" — and warned the country is approaching a historic moment of institutional corruption, reported MS NOW."Such a volcano of corruption, if allowed to go forward, will mark an inflection point in American history," argued plaintiffs Susan Douglas and Paul Romano in their final filing.The plaintiffs, attorneys from the Public Integrity Project, painted a portrait of interlocking financial interests at the heart of the planned three-day spectacle, which is set to culminate Sunday — Trump's 80th birthday — with seven professional UFC bouts staged on the South Lawn inside a massive temporary structure known as "the Claw."They pointed to million-dollar VIP packages, brand placement opportunities near the Lincoln Memorial, and an exclusive broadcast on Paramount Plus, a streaming service run by Trump allies Larry and David Ellison. No American, they noted, will be able to watch the self-described "celebration of America" without paying a subscription fee.They further alleged Trump bought stock in the company that owns the UFC earlier this spring, giving him a direct financial stake in the event's success. UFC head Dana White, who has organized the spectacle alongside the White House, is a longtime personal friend and political ally of the president.The Trump administration called the lawsuit meritless and said the plaintiffs were merely seeking "to complain about that which offends their sensibilities." Officials also argued the suit's last-minute timing alone should disqualify it, noting the event was publicly announced nearly a year ago.U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee, must now decide whether the fights go on — or whether the volcano gets capped.
Donald Trump looked at America’s 250th birthday and neurotically concluded that he’s the main attraction.A celebration intended to honor the founding of the United States is rapidly being repackaged as a celebration of Trump himself: his movement, his grievances, his white supremacy, his misogyny, and his power. Every new announcement, from the MAGA rallies to the vanity projects to the carefully choreographed spectacles on the National Mall and White House lawn, reinforces the same message: this is no longer about America turning 250. It’s about Trump making sure America spends its 250th birthday talking about Trump and the power of white men.And if that sounds familiar, it should. Washington has seen this kind of political pageantry before.The misogynists, racists, and fascists are taking over Washington, D.C. this summer, and the parallel to the massive Klan rally of August 1925, staged under another Republican president who declined to denounce it is the script. On that August day a hundred and one summers ago, somewhere between thirty- and forty-thousand Ku Klux Klan members marched down Pennsylvania Avenue twenty-two abreast and fourteen rows deep, ending at the base of the Washington Monument. President Calvin Coolidge refused to condemn them. Their version of America was defined entirely by exclusion: not Black Americans, not Catholics, not Jews, not immigrants, not organized labor, not anyone outside their narrow tribal vision of who counted. That night they burned crosses in Arlington while the band played “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “America.”A century later, the same Mall is being prepared for the same kind of show, and the artists scheduled to perform are figuring it out and getting out as fast as they can. Within forty-eight hours of the lineup announcement for what Trump’s people are calling the “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall, the Commodores, Martina McBride, Morris Day and the Time, Bret Michaels of Poison, Young MC, and Jodie Rocco of Milli Vanilli all put out statements saying they’d been misled, that nobody told them the event was a Trump-branded MAGA operation. Young MC told Rolling Stone it was a bait-and-switch. The Commodores said their music has always been their voice and they wouldn’t lend it to a single political party.Trump’s response was telling. He didn’t try to recruit new acts or apologize for the confusion. He went on his failing Nazi-infested social media site and demanded the whole concert series be scrapped, replaced with what he called “a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250.” Then he announced he’d personally headline the June 24 opening ceremony himself. The mask came off in about seventy-two hours. The 250th anniversary of American independence has been openly converted into a Trump fascist-fest, and only white MAGA who love to see gladiators beat each other bloody and senseless need apply.Louise and I lived in Washington during the Obama years, and we visited just about every monument the city has, sometimes more than once. We were invited to the White House, and walking up that long drive past the East Wing (which is now rubble) always felt like walking into something larger than any single president. The Lincoln Memorial at dusk, when the reflecting pool went dark and the seated figure of Lincoln doubled itself on that still water, was the kind of place where Americans of every stripe stood quietly together and remembered who we were supposed to be. That reflecting pool, finished in 1923, has held the gravity of Marian Anderson’s 1939 Easter Sunday concert when she’d been denied the stage at Constitution Hall because she was Black, and the gravity of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, and every quiet sunset visit by every family who came to the Mall to feel something solemn about this country.Trump has now had that pool painted blue at a cost he claims is around two million dollars, the same shade you’d find at the kid’s pool in a discount motel. He calls it “American flag blue.” Right. He drove his motorcade across the wet coating before it set, climbed out, and held a press conference standing in the middle of the pool with his cabinet secretaries around him, and now we’re paying to repair that damage, too. He told reporters the old gray stone was “never good.” That dark surface that turned itself into a mirror for Lincoln’s face for over a century, he claimed, was “never good.” The Cultural Landscape Foundation has sued to stop his desecration because the project skipped the federal review process that exists precisely to prevent a president from treating a national memorial like the patio renovation at one of his gaudy golf motels.The June 24 event will be Trump in front of a crowd at the National Mall, hand-picked artists who didn’t pull out, and a brand of “patriotism” carefully scrubbed of anyone who might complicate the picture. The “State Fair” will run sixteen days. Vanilla Ice and Flo Rida are still on the bill.
Largest comeback in NBA finals history galvanizes city and inspires morning-after chants of ‘Knicks in five!’New Yorkers woke up on Thursday morning – those who had even slept in the city that never sleeps – still jubilant after the Knicks men’s basketball team had made history the night before.The team staged the largest comeback in NBA finals history to overcome the San Antonio Spurs in the dying seconds of the fourth game of the finals – and put themselves 3-1 up and within one game of a rare championship win. Continue reading...
In four minutes on Wednesday morning, Donald Trump promised to bomb Iran and wished for world peace.At 11:50, gathered in the Oval Office for the signing of a $70 billion immigration enforcement bill, President Donald Trump turned to reporters with a warning about Iran. "We hit them hard yesterday, and we're gonna hit them again hard today — in case you miss it, in case you don't turn on your television set," he said.Four minutes later, a reporter asked what Trump wished for himself ahead of his 80th birthday."Peace for the world," he said.The day's strikes follow the downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday night. Both crew members were rescued by an unmanned drone boat — the first such operation in U.S. military history.Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday that the U.S. "must, of necessity, respond to this attack." By 5 p.m., CENTCOM had launched strikes on Iranian air defense and radar sites near the Strait — "a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression," it said. Iran hit back within hours, targeting U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan.Trump also declined Wednesday to rule out hitting civilian infrastructure. Asked about power plants and bridges, he replied: "I'm not gonna say that to you, but I could do that."He blamed Tehran for the collapse of peace talks, accusing Iran of running out the clock on a deal he called "fully negotiated.""They keep playing us for suckers," Trump said. "They dealt with some very stupid presidents."The war began February 28 with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian military and government sites. It has now surpassed 100 days.
