Trump’s cage fight birthday bash faces legal switch kick
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/8/800052034/whitehouse/trumps-cage-fight-birthday-bash-faces-legal-switch-kick/
Trump’s cage fight birthday bash faces legal switch kick
It’s getting kind of difficult to keep track of all the lawsuits against all of President Donald Trump’s efforts to turn Washington, D.C., into one of his resorts. This weekend brought us a brand-new one, with two plaintiffs suing to stop the Ultimate Fighting Championship fight scheduled for Trump’s birthday on June 14.
It might seem like this lawsuit is a day late and a dollar short, given that we are just days away from this glorious event, but it turns out that the plaintiffs, along with the rest of us, only just learned exactly how bad this whole thing is.
Last year, the National Park Service issued a temporary rule that exempted America250 events from permitting requirements, even if on the grounds of the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. However, that exemption is limited to “America250 events planned, organized, and executed by executive departments and agencies or the [United States Semiquincentennial] Commission.” If that wasn’t clear enough, the rule also says it applies only to events “for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of American Independence.”
But “UFC Freedom 250” isn’t part of America’s birthday. It’s part of Trump’s 80th birthday, and there is no special exemption for that, even if UFC head Dana White is ridiculous enough to say that having a cage match because Trump wanted one is actually for all of us, America, happy birthday.
Far from being an official celebration of America, Freedom 250 is really just another way to bribe Trump. Much like the big dumb ballroom, large companies hoping for even bigger government contracts have ponied up so that Trump can feel like a big special boy.
Now, having Freedom 250 be the organizer of the UFC match would still run afoul of the law, given the exemption only covers America250 events, but what seems to have urgency for the lawsuit is that a Freedom 250 spokesman said the White House fight is not actually affiliated with Freedom 250 either, nor is the IndyCar vroom vroom that Trump also demanded.
So, the lawsuit points out, this is just a private for-profit sporting event. That’s why there are “brand partners” like crypto.com. Last time we checked, America’s actual birthday didn’t need a grifty crypto sponsor.
Dana White has made sure everyone knows that the UFC fight is costing him $60 million, but he only expects to recoup $30 million, poor guy. That kind of overlooks that the UFC is selling “sponsorship” packages ranging from $1 million to $1.5 million. People who drop that coin aren’t really “sponsoring” anything—it just gets them a very expensive ticket. So, if the UFC sells 31 of these, it’s basically in the black.
Another UFC bigwig, Mark Shapiro, made exceedingly clear that this is a profit-making opportunity for the ages: “This is the greatest earned-marketing tool of all time. It’s a once-in-a-generation moment. The kind of attention, awareness, and sampling we’re going to get from audiences around the world, on that day alone, will be more than we could get in an entire year.”
Of course, folks who can’t make it can pay another Trump crony, David Ellison, to stream the fights live on Paramount+.
Trump’s big mouth is also part of what landed him in this lawsuit. On June 3, he went on TikTok to say that the ghastly enormous octagon thingy that is currently wrecking the White House lawn was somehow just like the Eiffel Tower and “maybe we’ll never ever take it down.”
Also undoubtedly a factor? Learning that weigh-ins for the fight will be at the Lincoln Memorial. Just makes your heart swell with patriotism, doesn’t it?
We can pretty much predict the administration’s response to the lawsuit, right? It will be some variation on how it is unconstitutional to not let Trump do whatever he wants. Indeed, that’s pretty much the argument the Department of Justice made at the court of appeals in the ballroom case. Judge Patricia Millett asked the DOJ attorney, “If the government decides very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, the people whose ancestors—that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast—nothing can be done?” His response? “I think that’s right, yes.”
As appalling as that is, at least the administration is openly acknowledging that the ongoing transformation of Washington into a low-rent slapdash crapfest can only continue if courts buy the argument that nothing is sacred in America save for Trump’s wishes. And it’s just adding insult to injury that his wishes are so ugly, tasteless, and tacky.
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