The 154-foot-tall structure, painted red, white and blue, now towers over the White House itself, rising next to the rubble where Trump has proposed a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that has been the subject of ongoing litigation. The cage inside “the Claw” will host Ultimate Fighting Championship matches on June 14, an event the UFC calls “UFC Freedom 250” and which is billed as a celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence coinciding with Trump’s 80th birthday.
The event has become a flashpoint in the broader legal battle over the scope of presidential authority. On June 5, Judge Patricia Millet of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned Justice Department lawyer Yaakov Roth about whether the government could act with impunity if it moved fast enough. The case before the court was brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which challenged Trump’s decision to demolish the East Wing of the White House and construct a ballroom without congressional approval, commission review, environmental studies, or public input.
“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?” Millet asked.
“I think that’s right, yes,” Roth replied.
“When did it become a fait accompli?” Millet continued. “If this were complete lawlessness by the government … it couldn’t be stopped?”
“On these theories, I think that’s right,” Roth said.
The Justice Department has grounded its argument in the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling granting “absolute” presidential immunity for “official acts,” which Roth’s colleague has cited as Trump’s authority to act unilaterally.
The Public Integrity Project, a nonprofit group, has filed a separate lawsuit seeking to stop the UFC event from taking place on federal grounds. “This plan is deeply corrupt,” the lawsuit states. “UFC Freedom 250 is a private, for-profit sporting event being ‘planned, organized, and executed’ by the UFC, its broadcast partners, and its advertisers, not by the federal government. And it is not in any material sense a ‘celebration of the 250th anniversary of American Independence’ — it is, instead, a celebration of the UFC’s brand and the 80th anniversary of Donald Trump’s birth.”
The lawsuit argues that the event does not satisfy conditions for special semiquincentennial events on the South Lawn or at the Lincoln Memorial. Weigh-ins and face-offs are scheduled at the Lincoln Memorial, where the statue of Abraham Lincoln is flanked by the engraved words of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural. On the Ellipse, jumbotron screens will show the fights to tens of thousands of fans who were not invited to sit ringside at “the Claw.”
The UFC is offering VIP access packages, described as “Partnership Investment,” for $1.5 million, according to the lawsuit. Two weeks after the match was announced, Trump’s “wealth advisers” purchased up to $50,000 in stock of TKO Holding Group, the UFC’s parent company. One TKO executive touted the event as “the greatest earned-marketing tool of all time.”
UFC President Dana White, who has spoken on the podium at the 2024 Republican National Convention and contributes to Trump’s political action committee, admitted the event was “Trump’s idea,” according to the Public Integrity Project’s filing. Trump has a long history with the UFC: in 2001, when the sport was banned in 36 states and Senator John McCain called it “human cockfighting,” Trump hosted UFC matches at his struggling Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal.
For home viewers, the event will stream on Paramount+, owned by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison. The Ellisons’ Skydance company purchased Paramount for $8 billion in a deal that received Justice Department approval. Shortly after that approval, the TKO Group signed a seven-year contract with Paramount+ valued at a projected $1.1 billion annually for exclusive UFC broadcast rights.
Paramount also paid Trump a $16 million personal settlement to resolve a lawsuit in which Trump accused CBS News’ “60 Minutes” of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris — a settlement that critics have said appears intended to clear the way for Federal Communications Commission approval of the Skydance-Paramount deal.
The night before the match, Trump is holding a $1 million-per-person dinner at Trump National Golf Club in Potomac, Virginia, for his Super Pac Maga Inc. Since the 2024 election, Maga Inc has raised more than $342 million from “the GOP’s legacy donor class and its newer crop of tech and finance billionaires,” according to Forbes Magazine.
Crypto.com, a corporate operator that has donated $20 million to Trump-aligned causes and has a branding deal with the UFC placing its logo on fighters’ uniforms, is offering a “$1 million $CRO bonus pool for the Fight of the Night.”
A Republican lobbyist told NBC News that the Trump political operation has been using the UFC event to raise money. “They are raising a shit-ton of money and have used it as another unofficial vehicle for corporate donors to give and gain favor with Trump,” the lobbyist said.
Trump himself suggested in a video on TikTok that “the Claw” might never be taken down, comparing it to the Eiffel Tower, which was built as a temporary structure for the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. “Maybe we’ll never, ever take it down,” Trump said.
Commentator Joe Rogan, who served as a color commentator for early UFC events on Trump’s recommendation, remarked after Trump was booed during the national anthem at the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden on June 9 that Trump “should stick to the UFC, they’re going to boo him everywhere else.”