The Dictatorship
Cage fighting, anyone? Welcome to Trump’s 80th birthday party on the White House lawn.
President Donald Trump is celebrating his milestone 80th birthday on Sunday with a spectacle of men cage fighting on the White House South Lawn.
“UFC Freedom 250,” a series of invite-only mixed martial art fighting competitions that are part of the Trump administration’s year-long ‘America250’ celebrations, brought lots of fanfare, and plenty of controversy.
The president is marking his new status as an octogenarian alongside administration officials, donors and family, despite criticism of the event’s venue, along with its potential to financially benefit those involved.
Trump and his friend Dana White, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, have repeatedly claimed that the spectacle was only coincidentally timed with the president’s birthday. “It happens to be my birthday, but I didn’t do it for that reason,” Trump said. “‘Sir, we like the June 14 date.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s my birthday,’” he recounted. “They didn’t know it, but they picked it.”
But Vice President JD Vance wished his boss a happy birthdaysaying, “Looking forward to celebrating later today at the UFC fight!”
“Happy Birthday to the GOAT,” Vance wrote in an X post.
Several members of the Trump family were spotted in Washington for the president’s birthday weekend, including his daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and granddaughter Kai Trump. First lady Melania Trump was also set to join the wrestling festivities on the South Lawn, according to a White House official. The president was slated to have dinner with his family before the birthday brawl, the White House said.
Notably, Kushner — a businessman with investments in the Middle East who is not currently employed by the administration — is playing an active role in negotiations to end the war with Iran, which Trump telegraphed he hoped would reach a new breakthrough on Sunday with the possible signing of a new negotiating framework.
The podcast and social media stars who were instrumental to Trump’s 2024 election victory, including Joe Rogan, came to Washington for the spectacle. Rogan, a longtime UFC commentator, previously criticized the decision to hold the fight outdoors because of potentially dangerous weather conditions — a prescient warning with rain, wind and thunderstorms in the forecast.
On Sunday afternoon, the White House said “rain or shine, we’re celebrating our great country no matter what” after The Weather Channel posted an ominous forecast on social media.
John Shahidi, a major content creator manager and Trump ally, was also expected to be in attendance, along with two NELK Boy members, the popular YouTube podcasters who backed then-candidate Trump in 2024, Kyle John Forgeard and Salim Sirur. John Fisher, a golf creator known as “Big John,” were in the mix, too, according to a person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to speak freely.
The presence of viral influencers is a reminder of the political capital the president’s team needs to restore ahead of the crucial 2026 midterms, given that the president’s approval ratings have sharply dropped in recent months. UFC’s most loyal fanbase — young men —are a critical voting bloc for the GOP, who have grown frustrated with the economy under Trump.
Rogan has repeatedly taken aim at Trump’s policies, including disagreement with Trump’s mass deportation campaign, tariffs and the war with Iran. Nonetheless, the host of the most-listened-to-podcast has remained in Trump’s orbitMS NOW previously reported, demonstrating the president’s acknowledgement of Rogan’s reach to his base.
Unlike typical 12-to-15 fight Ultimate Fighting Championship events, UFC Freedom 250 consists of only seven fights. Rather than taking place in a traditional indoor sports arena or stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, the White House fight night was orchestrated underneath a 90-foot red, white and blue steel arch structure estimated to cost around $60 million. White has repeatedly insisted that the UFC — not taxpayers — are funding production costs.
MS NOW captured video on a jumbotron screen of “The Claw,” as it’s known, erected on the South Lawn. It was a compilation of imagery from the nation’s founding, civil rights protests, first responders at the scene of the 9/11 attacks, the first moon landing, boxing legend Muhammad Ali and UFC fighters in the ring — a nod to the United States’ 250th anniversary.
The imagery of the civil rights era, however, stands in stark contrast to efforts by the Trump administration to remove references to slavery or racial discrimination in museums and on federal websites. “Our fighting spirit is a living legacy of all who step forward when the moment demands,” a narrator says. “We’re a nation born of revolution, so fight is in our DNA.”
The Claw and its towering canopy and location drew fierce criticism from those who said it desecrates the historic building that represents the government’s executive branch. Critics also bemoaned the use of federal property, given Trump — whose financial disclosures showed he invested in UFC’s parent company in March — along with his allies, including Paramount CEO David Ellison, who is airing the fight, could profit from the extravaganza.
A federal judge on Friday denied an emergency request by a watchdog group to block the fights.
Lindsey Pipia contributed to this report.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Akayla Gardner is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
The Democratic groups built to elect women have spent decades hoping to unseat Maine’s five-term Republican senator, Susan Collins. Now, they have a real shot — and to take it, they will have to help a man dogged by allegations about his treatment of women get elected to the U.S. Senate.
The man is Graham Platner, the oysterman and political newcomer whose profile has rocketed to national attention, driven by the combination of his unorthodox background and magnetic stage presence.
That appeal, however, has been shadowed by his conduct toward women. Platner has been accused of writing derogatory posts on Reddit about women and victims of rape (he has apologized for those commentsand asked voters not to judge him by “the worst thing I said on the internet on my worst day 14 years ago”). He has admitted to sexting women other than his wife early in his marriage (which, he said, spurred him to seek counseling). And he has been accused by past girlfriends of demeaning them, including at least one accusation that he physically threatened her, which he has denied.
None of it has been enough to stop his campaign. On June 9, he won Maine’s Democratic primary in a landslide.
That has left Democratic women in Maine with a choice that, for some, feels like a compromise no matter how they make it: line up behind a man accused of mistreating women, or withhold their support and risk handing a sixth term to the senator many blame for the loss of federal abortion rights.
“Susan Collins is someone who has talked for decades, you know, in her career in the Senate about reproductive rights, has been supported in the past by Planned Parenthood,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “And there is this deep sense of betrayal posed, post the Kavanaugh vote, that she did not stand up when it really mattered.”
Collins voted in 2018 to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Four years later, he was part of the conservative majority that overturned Roe v. Wade. That vote — a raw wound for many women in Maine and beyond — has become a centerpiece of Platner’s attack ads.
“Susan Collins told us she would protect Roe v. Wade,” a narrator says in one recent ad, which hit airwaves after Platner won Maine’s primary. “She was wrong. Now she won’t even admit she was wrong.
But for some women, the messenger is not unburdened either.
“Women have been put in a terrible position,” said Walsh. Women “who care both about reproductive freedom but also have strong beliefs about issues around sexual harassment, sexual violence, misogyny … the kind of behavior that we’ve been hearing about from him — it’s a terrible position women have been put in.”
Platner’s campaign did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment for this article.
For some abortion rights advocates, Platner — who supports codifying abortion rights in federal law and covering reproductive care under Medicare for All — has become the best available vehicle for a closely divided Senate that many hope will expand abortion access nationally after Dobbs. Last week, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed him after supporting Maine Gov. Janet Mills earlier in the primary. At a news conference, the fund’s president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, characterized Collins as “a fair-weather feminist,” and voiced confidence that Platner would be a strong supporter of abortion rights in the Senate.
A person at Planned Parenthood Action Fund familiar with the endorsement process told MS NOW that it “felt important” for the organization to back Platner both on the week of the four-year anniversary of the Dobbs ruling and on the heels of Collins’ recent defense of her vote for Kavanaugh. The person, who was granted anonymity by MS NOW to speak freely about the endorsement process, added that Platner sat for an interview with officials at the national organization as well as the board of the local Planned Parenthood before PPAF decided to back him, and that those conversations convinced officials he was worthy of their endorsement.
“Susan Collins has caused a lot of damage,” the person said. “Women have died [due to abortion bans]are going to continue to die, and so for us, there’s just wasn’t an option to not be involved here.”
But Collins’ record was only part of it. Asked whether Platner’s controversies gave the group any pause, the staffer would only say that McGill Johnson emphasized in a direct conversation with Platner the “trust” women place in the organization, and that she asked “for some reassurance around certain things, and he gave us that.”
Not everyone is reassured.
“On one hand, I kind of laugh,” said Darcy Halvorsen, a lifelong Democratic organizer and voter in Maine, of PPAF’s Platner endorsement. “He’s never run for office before, he’s never held an office … he’s never even held a town council seat. And so I kind of laugh because it’s like, how can you be a ‘reproductive champion’? He really hasn’t done anything for choice.”
Other reproductive rights advocacy groups seem to be having a harder time squaring what they see as the need to oust Collins with Platner’s own checkered past. Reproductive Freedom for All — which announced a $23.5 million midterms strategy last week, including backing some Democratic candidates — declined to comment on the Maine Senate race in response to MS NOW’s inquiries. A staffer with All in Action Fund, the political arm of the reproductive justice organization All* Above All, told MS NOW the organization has yet to determine whether it will endorse Platner, due in part to his controversies.
“We are clearly and narrowly focused on leaders who are committed and fighting for access to reproductive health,” the person said, adding that they also weigh concerns around “integrity and track record.”
Some groups have drawn a harder line. One day after The New York Times published a report in June in which one of Platner’s ex-girlfriends accused him of physically threatening her while they were dating, the National Organization for Women sent an email blast urging voters in Maine to elect Mills in the primary, despite the fact she suspended her campaign in April.
“Feminists who have been working so hard for gender equality and the Equal Rights Amendment have seen this script before — the qualified woman is passed over, the Democratic party rallies around the damaged male ‘star,’ and we are told to be quiet about it for the greater good,” NOW’s statement said. “If a woman had even a fraction of Platner’s record, she would have been forced out on day one.”
Kathy Bonk, the president of the Maine chapter of NOW, said she cast her ballot for Mills, and suggested that the “progressive wing of the Democratic Party” was to blame for “pushing” candidates like Platner “without vetting them.” “If they did vet them and they had that background on women, that’s even worse,” she said.
How a candidate with Platner’s record got that far, that fast, is itself a source of recrimination. The Wall Street Journal reported that Dan Moraff, a progressive strategist and the architect of Platner’s campaign, spurned the typical weekslong background-check process in favor of a faster and more cost-effective option. The fast-track research, the Journal reported, did not uncover many of the controversies that later engulfed Platner’s campaign.
For some, it highlights a more pervasive problem with how male politicians treat women. “It crosses all political parties,” said Deidre Malone, the president of the National Women’s Political Caucus, which endorsed Mills early in the primary season. “When you look at, you know, Platner, but you look at also Eric Swalwell, you look at Tony Gonzales, you know, Cory Mills — I mean, every party, it seems like has some type of scandal associated with either sexual harassment or something … that is inappropriate.” Swalwell, a California Democrat, and Gonzalesa Texas Republican, both resigned from Congress this spring amid sexual misconduct allegations. Both, along with Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., faced House Ethics Committee investigations.
Halvorsen cast her primary ballot for Platner during early voting — before the extramarital sexting allegations became public.
Asked if she plans to vote the same way in the general election, Halvorsen said she is considering not voting for the first time in her adult life.
“It’s really, it’s damning, I think, of a candidate,” she said. “I wonder about what else, what else there is? Is there going to be something else? Is another woman going to come forward?”
Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s top officials and brothers of the country’s new supreme leader emerged into public view Sunday to attend the funeral prayers for the late Ayatollah Ali Khameneisignaling a new confidence in their safety as calls grew for the killing of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Their presence before hundreds of thousands of people in the capital Tehran would have been unthinkable during the Iran war, which saw airstrikes in its opening moments on Feb. 28 kill the 86-year-old Khamenei, his family members and other officials.
Israel also targeted others who appeared publicly during the war, in at least one case likely using their public appearanceto fix their position for a strike.
But still unseen was Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. He is believed to be in hiding after reportedly being wounded in the airstrike that killed his father. Israel has threatened to kill him as well as he leads a theocracy now negotiating with the United States over a permanent end to the war and over Iran strangling traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies.
Ziba Naderi, a 42-year-old nurse attending the funeral Sunday, said Iran needed to follow whatever Mojtaba Khamenei commands in regards to the nation.
“I heard the call for revenge, but our leader should say what we need to do,” she said. “And we must listen to him.”
Funeral includes prayers and calls for revenge
Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, a 97-year-old Shiite cleric, led the prayers at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla for Khamenei and his late family members.
On hand were Khamenei’s sons Masoud, Meysam and Mostafa, who haven’t been seen since the war. Revolutionary Guard head Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, who only had been photographed for the first time since the war on Thursdaycould be seen in the crowd by Associated Press journalists, flanked by plainclothes security forces as he wore a black baseball cap.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Esmail Qani, who leads the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, also attended.
Their appearances came as posters and graffiti at the Grand Mosalla called for the killing of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mohammad Rasouli, a poet who emceed the event prior to the prayers, drew calls of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”
Speaking to the crowd over loudspeakers at the funeral, Rasouli asked, referring to Trump, “Why is the most bastard man in the world still alive?”
The question drew cheers from the crowd, and again when Rasouli said “the world is no longer a good place for” Trump. It marked the first, direct threat to Trump’s life by an official during the funeral.
Trump threats grow at funeral
The American president was giving a speech at the same time across the world in Washington, D.C., for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.
“We’ve had tremendous success,” Trump said about the U.S. military. “You look at Venezuela, you look at Iran. We wiped it out, wiped out their military.”
A far-larger crowd for the funeral than the day before attended Sunday. Mourners dressed in black walked to the site, carrying banners and flags honoring Khamenei and also calling for Trump’s killing.
“I came here to shout and seek revenge,” said Gholamreza Sabooni, 29-year-old man who works in a grocery. “They killed our imam, we should kill their leader, Trump.”
U.S. federal authorities have been tracking Iranian threats against Trump and other administration officials for years. That stems from Trump ordering the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimaniwho had led the Quds Force. Iran repeatedly has denied plotting to kill Trump, though hard-line propaganda footage long has suggested Trump was in Tehran’s crosshairs.
Trump meanwhile promised to destroy Iran’s very civilizationduring the war among a variety of other threats.
Funeral postpones talks with US
Khamenei’s body will be transported to cities in Iran and neighboring Iraq, with authorities planning to drive his casket and others through the streets of Tehran on Monday. Authorities have shut down streets, airspace and daily life for the mourning, which will end Thursday as he is buried at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, Khamenei’s place of birth.
Authorities offered no attendance count for the event Saturday and Sunday. Other cities across Iran also held mourning ceremonies.
For now, talks over reaching a permanent end to the war are on hold until the end of the funeral. Having a major turnout could prove important as Iran tries to leverage its hold on the Strait of Hormuzin negotiations as concern lingers that Israel could attack again.
“Our foreign policy should not be shaped in a way that allows our martyred leader’s blood to be dishonored and other countries can afford to do such things, without any serious response from our government and diplomatic system,” mourner Mohammad Reza Sharifi said.
The Dictatorship
Trump mixes patriotism with partisanship as he celebrates America’s ‘joyous’ 250th anniversary
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trumpmixed partisan politics with patriotic appeals on Saturday as he commemorated the 250th anniversary of American independence,a moment he declared “one of the most joyous and glorious milestones of all time.”
Speaking in Washington after storms prompted a roughly two-hour evacuation of the National Mall, Trump honored veterans, including several from World War II and one of the first Black officers to lead a Special Forces team in combat in Vietnam. They appeared before flags that symbolized some of the most significant and challenging moments in American history, from the one that was draped over Abraham Lincoln’s casket to the one that flew on the plane piloted by the Wright Brothers.
Yet Trump also leaned into partisan territory unusual for an Independence Day address, which presidents typically use as a moment to unify the country. Instead, he stumped again for the SAVE America Act,an elections bill that’s encountering challenges even from Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress. He highlighted his support for the Second Amendment and revived denunciations of communism,which are becoming an increasingly central part of Trump’s message ahead of the November midterms.
The speech capped a holiday that Trump has gone to great lengths to shape to his own tastes. He was introduced by two musical performers who often appear at his trademark rallies, including Lee Greenwood, who performed “God Bless the USA.” The event organizers were largely aligned with the White House, supplanting a bipartisan organization that was launched by Congress a decade ago.
“We will always be on top,” Trump said. “We will never let our country fall. We will always be the best.”
Trump didn’t talk about himself as much as he does during his normal rally speeches. Still, he still found time to include a joke about seeking a third presidential term and about World War II’s “greatest generation.”
“They are the greatest generation,” Trump said. “I hate to admit that, but they are.”
Anticipation for the milestone holiday has been building for much of the year, serving as an opportunity for Americans to reflect on their complicated history as onetime colonists of an empire who became a superpower of their own. Organizers of celebrations months in the making had to adjust or cancel activities entirely as much of the East Coast sweltered under heat that approached and in many cases surpassed triple digits.
Heat is defining the big weekend in many places
Severe weather prompted the cancellation of celebrations in Hartford, Connecticut, along with Harrisburg and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Spectators at Boston’s fireworks and concert were told to briefly seek shelter before events later resumed. An evacuation was also ordered in Philadelphia. New York and Pittsburgh moved forward with fireworks but shifted the time to accommodate the shifting weather.
The disruption was particularly acute in Washington, where signs at the Great American State Fair posted an alert shortly after 7 p.m. ET encouraging participants to leave the area. Crowds gathered in museums, subway stations and federal buildings near the Mall. At the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center they waited in chairs and sat on the floor to cool off in the air conditioning.
Crowds were building in the area several hours before the evacuation. Tina Hale, 58, of Cohoes, New York, watched three of her grandchildren children dip their hands into a pool of water near a museum. Hale pointed toward the sky and urged them to look up as three military jets roared above the crowd.
“If that doesn’t make you proud to be an American,” she said.
David Koshko, 42, and his wife, Jennifer Koskho, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, came to Washington for a baseball game but planned to stay for the city’s fireworks show. After baking in the heat for hours during the Pittsburgh Pirates’ win over the Washington Nationals, they took a break in the shade of an overpass near the National Mall to plot their next stop.
“Just to be a part of the 250 years (anniversary) is an amazing thing,” said David Koshko, a commercial driver and veteran of the Marine Corps reserves.
In Philadelphia, fireworks began to crack as early as midday in the birthplace of the nation near the site where the Declaration of Independence was adopted by delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Hundreds of visitors were gathering at Independence Hall in the sweltering heat to await the celebrations coinciding with the France-Paraguay World Cup knockout game at Philadelphia Stadium, which began with commemorations of the holiday.
“It’s one big party in here,” Carlos Alban, who traveled to Philadelphia from Chicago to watch the match, said as he arrived at the stadium, adding that he spotted a fan in the parking lot dressed as one of the Founding Fathers.
In New York, tall ships, with their masts, rigging and white sails outlined against a blue sky, made a procession around the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River, recalling the fanfare around America’s 200th anniversary in 1976.
The 43 ships were followed by a display of aerial might with a stealth bomber and the Navy’s Blue Angels. Patrouille de France, the French Air Force’s acrobatic teams, flew over New York Harbor with their red, white and blue trails, evoking images of the American flag.
“We got up early and just rode our bikes about a mile down here to come see the scene,” said Oona Moore, a Jersey City, New Jersey, resident who took in the New York festivities. “We saw the tall ships and we saw the planes, you know, all different manner of military aircraft. I’ve never seen it so close and in the sky at the same time.”
At George Washington’s Mount Vernon, people took the Oath of Allegiance to become U.S. citizens. They stood with eyes closed and hands over hearts for the national anthem.
In Phoenix, Steven Dortch, 25, and his brother JayLn Dortch, 23, gathered at Granada Park to try to forge a new July 4 cookout tradition. JayLn Dortch said young people in the U.S. give him hope by thinking for themselves and not taking the words from older people at face value.
He said the country needs to keep in mind the everyday, hardworking people who “keep America going.”
- Platner’s primary win leaves some Democratic women with a tough choice
- Inside the White House push to get Folarin Balogun back on the field
- Top Iranian officials attend funeral of late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran
- Trump mixes patriotism with partisanship as he celebrates America’s ‘joyous’ 250th anniversary
- Ketanji Brown Jackson eviscerated Clarence Thomas’ ‘colorblind Constitution’ fantasy
- What Victor Willis got wrong, and right, about ‘YMCA’
- Top Iranian officials attend funeral of late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran
- Fireworks, heat and politics: America celebrates its 250th birthday
- The other US-Belgian spat
- Starmer, Burnham to skip pubs
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