Since he came down the escalator 11 years ago, Donald Trump’s personal conduct made him uniquely unfit for office and Americans had a moral obligation to oppose him, so said Democrats. Character mattered in politics, they told us. But on Tuesday, nearly 150,000 Mainers sent a different message. Democrats handed Graham Platner a landslide primary […]
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin accuses the Biden administration of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse reports targeting migrant children.
President Trump’s Freedom 250 birthday extravaganza is looking so bleak that entire states are pulling out.NOTUS has reported that Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and North Carolina—the last of which Trump won in 2024—have all declined to send a representative to the president’s 16-day fair on the National Mall. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington remain undecided even as the fair begins just two weeks from now.Each state is supposed to have a 600-square-foot themed booth with a representative or official sent by state leadership. With these states declining to send one, the administration has decided to pick their own. Multiple states said they had no knowledge as to who was chosen to represent their homes or why.Other states noted the hefty price attached to the event. Michele Walker, the comms director of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, told NOTUS her state would have to spend a minimum of $100,000 on travel, hotels, and their themed booth all together.“We decided early in the process that we do not have the capacity to participate,” Walker said. “Our limited resources are focused on America250 events across North Carolina.”This news comes just a week after nearly all of the first wave of musical performers—from Young MC to the Commodores—dropped out as well. This lack of enthusiasm only reaffirms that this “Freedom 250” event, unlike the educational America250 commission, is just a birthday party for Trump.
The UFC Freedom 250 fight night, which will be held on June 14 is being presented as a patriotic celebration to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States. But in actual fact, the date doesn’t coincide with the birth of the nation, it falls on the President’s birthday.By installing an MMA octagon on the most symbolically charged turf in American democracy, Donald Trump is doing more than celebrating a sport. He is staging a vision of power in which the head of state no longer serves the nation – he embodies it, as a champion who dominates and subdues.With his administration navigating one of the gravest international crises of his second term, Trump appears consumed by two preoccupations: his plans for a grand White House ballroom and the UFC fight event scheduled on the South Lawn for June 14th. He has compared the structure being erected – a 27-meter-high octagon called “The Claw” to the Eiffel Tower, and has suggested it might never come down.The event was deemed significant enough that according to Politico, the G7 schedule was adjusted G7 schedule was adjusted to avoid a conflict.Claiming ownership of national symbolsOrganisers have framed the event as a patriotic and apolitical celebration of American history: between bouts, the UFC plans to air segments honouring national heroes, the nation’s founding, and the 250th anniversary of the United States. Yet none of the commemorations invoked actually fall on that date. The 250th anniversary of independence will be marked on July 4 2026; the flag’s 250th anniversary comes in 2027; and the Army’s bicentennial was already observed in 2025. The only milestone that actually falls on June 14 is Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. Under the cover of national commemoration, the event functions first as a presidential birthday party – and a political and financial operation.The broadcast will air on Paramount+, whose parent company was acquired in August 2025 by David Ellison, the son of Oracle’s co-founder and a figure closely associated with Donald Trump. The audience has been carefully selected: military personnel selected by the Pentagon under specific fitness criteria will serve as the televised backdrop. Trump has personally acquired shares in TKO Holding Group, the UFC’s parent company, which he has been promoting for months. This is not a sporting event honoured by the president’s presence. It is a presidential event dressed up as an MMA gala.A long-standing fascination with combat sportsTrump has long been drawn to combat sports and the spectacle of violence – this despite having avoided military service during the Vietnam War through a diagnosis of bone spurs provided by a physician who was a family acquaintance.In the 1980s, he cultivated close ties with professional wrestling’s WWE. In 2007, he staged a scripted showdown with WWE owner Vince McMahon in an event billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires”.Professional wrestling operates according to the logic of kayfabe – a convention by which audiences are invited to engage with a narrative everyone knows to be scripted. This dynamic illuminates much about how Trump operates. He grasped early that politics worked on the same principle: he did not turn politics into spectacle, he revealed that it already was one.The UFC, however, belongs to a different register. The fights are real. Trump’s interest dates to the early 2000s, when he hosted several UFC events at his Atlantic City casinos. Dana White, the UFC’s CEO, regularly recalls the support Trump allegedly provided when the organisation was still struggling for legitimacy. This closeness is not a recent enthusiasm – it reflects a long-standing relationship with a cultural world that has become central to a significant strand of the contemporary American right.From civic hero to fighting championTo appreciate the full weight of this choice, it helps to trace how the figure of the heroic American president has evolved. From the founding era onward, presidents have frequently been associated with a form of heroism – beginning with George Washington, whose greatness derived not from force but from his willingness to relinquish power after victory. Lincoln embodied moral authority rather than military might. In the twentieth century, the president-as-hero – from Roosevelt to Eisenhower – drew legitimacy from the idea of service: suffering, sacrifice, putting the nation before oneself. The democratic hero existed to serve something larger than himself.That model began to fracture after September 11, 2001. American political rhetoric gradually displaced it with the notion of toughness – hardness, resilience, the will to dominate. The hero was no longer expected merely to serve; he was expected to win. George W. Bush landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, already gestured towards this shift.
Washington Examiner White House reporter Naomi Lim said a lack of vetting on Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, could hurt Democrats’ hopes of controlling the Senate. Lim’s comments follow political consultant Daniel Moraff and fiancée Leanne Fan’s account of how they identified and recruited Platner to run for Maine’s Senate seat. […]
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche twice refused to discuss the federal lawsuit threatening Trump's White House UFC fight — with a ruling expected within hours.Blanche was appearing alongside DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin at a Thursday morning press conference on unaccompanied migrant children when a reporter tried to get him on record about the looming court fight."'On the UFC fight—'" the reporter began."'I'm not going to talk about the UFC fight,'" Blanche cut in. "'We're just here to talk about this.'"The reporter pressed: "'If [the judge] does order that it be blocked?'""'I'm not going to talk about the UFC fight,'" repeated Blanche, whose own DOJ filed the brief defending the event. "'We're here just to talk about why we're here.'"His remarks came just hours before oral arguments before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.The Public Integrity Project filed suit on June 7 on behalf of two Virginia residents, arguing the administration skipped congressional approval for the 92-foot, 600-ton "Claw" arena on the South Lawn, bypassed mandatory environmental review, and misused a temporary National Park Service rule designed for legitimate semiquincentennial events — not, the suit argues, a for-profit UFC card timed to Trump's 80th birthday.A lower court paused construction of Trump's $400 million White House ballroom project in April, citing lack of congressional approval. A separate judge ordered Trump's name stripped from the Kennedy Center in May on identical grounds.Stanford Law's Matthew Sanders told USA Today the complaint "lays out in a careful way the laws that apply and how they've been violated here."DOJ's own brief pushed back hard, arguing more than $60 million had been spent on the event and that plaintiffs had waited too long to file. Blocking it now, the government wrote, would amount to letting them "exercise a heckler's veto."
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.
A retired colonel sounded the alarm in a new piece for The Hill this week, warning that President Donald Trump is running headlong into a massive problem that he will inevitably botch.Jonathan Sweet is a retired lieutenant colonel who had three decades of service as a military intelligence officer and now frequently writes about military affairs alongside national security reporter Mark Toth. Their latest piece, published on Thursday morning, argued that Trump "doesn't know how to win in Iran" as the beleaguered peace talks with the Middle Eastern nation drag on with no end in sight."The day the ceasefire began in Iran is the day President Trump’s war strategy began to fall apart," Sweet and Toth wrote. "U.S. and Israeli forces were crushing Iran’s military and were poised to begin systematically targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij, Iran’s street-level domestic security force and regime enforcers. Then came Trump’s order to stand down. Operation Epic Fury came to a crashing halt, and the White House and the Persian Gulf have been mired ever since in a ceasefire that is on a road to nowhere."The pair further argued that, counter to the insistence of the Trump administration, Iran's military is not a "complete and total mess," nor has it been "completely defeated." In fact, they countered, "whether Mr. Trump fully grasps it or not, has learned to fight the U.S., Israel, and its Gulf state allies on an asymmetrical basis," meaning that "a traditional air force, navy or ground army is not required.""Trump, simply put, does not know how to defeat Iran’s asymmetric war against him," the pair argued. "Plus, he is failing to understand how the Iranian regime is using kinetic tools on a regional basis to gain leverage in the ongoing peace talks. We have described that approach as a three-ring-circus. Mining the Strait of Hormuz is the center ring or main act. Limited ballistic missile and drone strikes against the U.S. and its allies in the region is the second ring. The third? Linking the survival of Hezbollah, the crown jewel of Iran’s axis of resistance against Israel, to the ever-elusive deal being negotiated."They continued: "Trump repeatedly claims that he has effected regime change in Iran. But he has not. The faces changed when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ali Larijani and other top regime leaders were killed on the opening day of the war, but the regime’s militant ideology is the same. In reality, Iran’s regime has only become more entrenched. Most alarming, however, is that Trump seems oblivious that many of his comments, statements, and posts on Truth Social are perceived by Iran’s hardliners as signs of weakness."Ultimately, Sweet and Toth concluded, as they often have, that the only way for Trump to achieve victory over Iran in a meaningful way is to end efforts for a diplomatic solution, and instead "defeat them for real" by renewing the active military campaign against them.
