Hello and happy Tuesday — I’m Isaac Saul and I’m still over the moon about an email I got from a 17-year-old reader yesterday. With his permission, I’m publishing it in full here:

How’s that for an uplifting way to start your week?

Today, we’re taking a swing at UFC fight night on the White House lawn, a reader question about the Israel–Lebanon fighting, and a deeper look at another White House fight from the early 1900s. It’ll take roughly 14 minutes to read this heater. Lock in. 

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Quick hits.

1. A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base in California. Authorities believe all eight people on board were killed, and the cause of the crash is under investigation. (The crash)
2. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said the Justice Department is investigating him and his wife, claiming that the investigation is politically motivated. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department has commented on the existence of the probe. (The statement)
3. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the United Kingdom will ban children under 16 from accessing major social media platforms beginning in 2027. (The announcement)
4. Voters will cast ballots today in Georgia’s Republican runoff elections for Senate and governor and Alabama’s Senate runoff. Oklahoma and the District of Columbia are also holding primary elections. (The elections)
5. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said the chamber will attempt to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act in the measure. President Donald Trump had called on Republicans to pass the bills in tandem, but Thune called that idea “unrealistic.” (The plan)

Today’s topic.

UFC Freedom 250. On Sunday, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) hosted a mixed martial arts fighting event on the South Lawn of the White House, billed as a celebration of the United States’s 250th anniversary this summer. The event, which coincided with President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday, was held in front of approximately 4,000 spectators, including top Trump administration officials, active military members, and high-profile business executives. Some lawmakers criticized the cost and aesthetics of the event. 

Back up: President Trump, a longtime UFC fan and friend of UFC CEO Dana White, reportedly devised the event shortly after he won the 2024 election. In preparation for the fights, the UFC set up a temporary octagon surrounded by a 92-foot-tall lighting apparatus on the South Lawn and held promotional events at the nearby Lincoln Memorial. Two Virginia residents sued to stop the event, alleging that it violated environmental and National Park Service permitting requirements, but a federal judge found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. 

The UFC covered $60 million in expenses required to host the function, though multiple federal agencies were involved in its planning and staffing. Additionally, the federal government spent an estimated $10–$12 million in supplemental security costs, which were appropriated from a fund approved by Congress. 

Many prominent Republican lawmakers and cabinet members attended the fights, including Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Several tech executives were also in attendance, such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek, as well as Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison and podcaster and UFC commentator Joe Rogan. All seven fights ended in a knockout or technical knockout, the first time that has occurred in UFC history. Fighter Josh Hokit also sparked backlash for saying “Michelle Obama is a man” in his post-fight interview.

Some lawmakers criticized the president for hosting fights at the White House, suggesting it was an inappropriate location and a waste of government resources. “Trump is building a golden ballroom and for his birthday party — arranging a UFC fight on the White House grounds — while you’re fighting to pay this month’s bills,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote on X. Separately, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she didn’t think UFC fights “belong on the White House lawn.”

On Tuesday, several outlets reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested five people connected to a plot to attack the event. In total, the bureau identified 23 people allegedly involved in planning to use explosive-laden drones to trigger a mass evacuation that would direct crowds towards a sniper team. 

Today, we’ll survey reactions to the event from the left and right. Then, Executive Editor Isaac Saul shares his take.

What the left is saying.

• The left criticizes the fight, with many calling it indulgent and vulgar.
• Some suggest Trump and his associates financially benefited from the event.
• Others argue that the celebration degrades America’s national symbols.  

In The Guardian, Moira Donegan said “[Trump] presides over spectacles of violence carried out for his entertainment.”

“[Trump] wants to see his name and his portrait everywhere. He wants to feel like a big man, to see those he feels have wronged him be penitent and upset. Maybe most of all, he wants to indulge in his own bad taste,” Donegan wrote. “He loves the gaudy, clownish tokens of masculinity that appeal to very small children: big trucks, big muscles, and demonstrations of physical strength.”

“Hosting a UFC fight on the White House lawn likely affirmed many of his own most base and childlike fantasies of narcissistic gratification,” Donegan said. “The use of government property and national landmarks for a birthday celebration for him — one that was a profit-making enterprise for many of his friends in the private sector — helped further his own efforts to symbolically fuse the federal government with his person, to insist that he is America and is the state.”

In Salon, Sophia Tesfaye called the event “a gift to [Trump’s] billionaire friends.”

“The weekend was a case study in how the modern right-wing ecosystem transforms public institutions into branding opportunities while portraying anyone who notices as an enemy of the nation,” Tesfaye wrote. “It was a gathering of people… on public land, at public expense, to watch a private company’s product, sponsored by the president’s own businesses… The billionaire class was hosted to a weekend of high-rolling access, buying policy influence on Saturday and sitting cageside at the executive mansion on Sunday. 

“Freedom 250 isn’t free — and millions of Americans are being forced to foot the bill, whether they realize it or not,” Tesfaye said. “Trump threw himself a private, for-profit birthday party at a time when working-class Americans are profoundly struggling. The only reason the administration and its media echo chamber are frantically calling it a ‘patriotic celebration’ is to artificially tie it to the nation’s upcoming semiquincentennial. They are maliciously conflating the official, congressionally mandated ‘America 250’ with a corporate, trademarked money-making scheme called ‘Freedom 250.’”

The New York Daily News editorial board argued that the event “debases the White House.”

“Though it’s easy to laugh at this, we shouldn’t forget what underlies it,” the board wrote. “Trump is intentionally desecrating many of our nation’s most hallowed symbols, tossing out the celebration of national unity and progress that has been envisioned to create yet another rally for himself and his political movement, because he thinks (and has long thought) that he is synonymous with the state itself.”

“In some ways, though, this is the most apt and most honest celebration of our current moment in American history. A staid celebration of our democratic norms and freedoms would be nothing but a farce, even a mockery. This spectacle is much more reflective of what Trump intends for the country,” the board said. “This low moment will go down in the history books, but we hope that it will go down as a mere warning of what can happen when we allow a con man to get so far in subverting everything our country is supposed to represent.”

What the right is saying.

• Many on the right say the event was exciting and question the left’s outrage.
• Some praise the event for its patriotic themes. 
• Others say the fight mirrors the current political landscape. 

In the Daily Caller, Mary Rooke argued that Trump is winning over “red-blooded Americans everywhere.”

“President Donald Trump is delivering exactly the kind of 250th anniversary celebration that millions of Americans wanted: bold and unapologetic events rooted in the traditions and values that built this country,” Rooke wrote. “Americans have already seen motocross stunts performed in front of the White House, and the UFC 250 fight card produced on the White House lawn, complete with military flyovers, country music, and massive fireworks.”

“The reality is that the left was always going to boycott or criticize anything built under Trump’s leadership. Predictable outrage and performer withdrawals were going to happen no matter what the events looked like,” Rooke said. “By leaning hard into red-state patriotism instead of chasing leftist approval, the administration ensures that everyday Americans have something real to be proud of supporting… The administration should keep doubling down on the heartland values and traditional American strengths that actually unite the majority of citizens who love this country.”

In Power Line, John Hinderaker said the event was “spectacular and went off without a hitch.”

“I will admit that, despite my reservations about MMA, I enjoyed last night’s event greatly, as did my family members who watched it,” Hinderaker wrote. “The real point of the event, of course, was patriotic. There was a flyover, the Marine band played frequently, and the fighters often made patriotic and religious comments after their bouts. The fighters walked out of the White House and were accompanied to the octagon, in each case, by a Medal of Honor winner and a local law enforcement officer or a first responder.”

“It was, in some ways, rude and crude. Apart from the violence of the fights themselves, there was bad language, and one fighter yelled ‘Michelle Obama is a man!’ during his post-fight interview,” Hinderaker said. “Democrats denounced UFC Freedom 250 as a ‘desecration’ of the sacred White House grounds… That complaint does reflect the fact that for Democrats, government is religion. The Democrats counter-programmed with a lame show that featured (I am told) washed-up singers and elderly white ladies dancing badly. Happily for the Democrats, hardly anyone saw it.”

In Reason, Billy Binion said the fight is “the perfect event for the present, not the past.”

“A series of cage matches is an unusual choice to celebrate the history of the Founding. But it is arguably the perfect event to capture this moment in history. The story of mixed martial arts is itself a microcosm of the progression,” Binion wrote. “It would have been difficult to believe the sport would have a substantial audience just a few decades ago when it was banned in 36 states… Yet now it will have an audience at the White House. Its inclusion is a snapshot not just of the sport’s surprising trajectory but of how political sport has evolved in parallel.”

“[The South Lawn] is no longer a place where outsiders are unwelcome by the establishment. It is a place where outsiders have become the establishment,” Binion said. “A celebration that transgressed partisan lines to venerate the Founding principles and the freedoms that make America unique would have been ideal. It also would have been an act, as politicians talk out of both sides of their mouths about the need to come together while seizing virtually every opportunity to trash their opponents.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where we give ourselves space to share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Americans have been arguing about what is “real America” for almost as long as humans have been fighting.
• Some aspects of the event were bothersome, but I don’t really care that the White House hosted a UFC fight.
• The real story to me — again and still — is the grift and corruption.

Executive Editor Isaac Saul: Something very funny happened in the wake of the UFC fight night at the White House on Sunday.

Some writers on the left couldn’t help but invoke 20th century French theorists to try to explain why human beings like a violent spectacle, showing themselves to be so detached from the appeal of a UFC fight night they have to reach into academia for a framework to understand it. At the very same time, writers on the right try to say “real America” is entirely made up of caricatured cowboys and energy-drink guzzlers, then insist that an event like this (with a 16% approval rating) is somehow the purest form of our country’s being. 

And then other writers on the left themselves insist that, actually, this — a violent, stupid, and conspiratorial spectacle — truly is the “real America,” while writers on the right insist this isn’t the real America anymore because we’ve become so emasculated, over-educated, and hyper-sensitive.

It’s all such trodden ground that it’s equally amusing and stupid to me at the same time. 

Some people enjoy combat sports like UFC or boxing because our species is prone to violence, and we’ve spent millennia beheading each other for everything from petty crime to territorial conquest. Natural selection has both favored people who can cooperate as well as individuals who could compete for food and territory and mates, with violence an efficient way to win those resources. I don’t think this is all that complicated: Violent sports — UFC, boxing, hockey, football, rugby, wrestling — are healthy outlets for base-level, reptile-brained drives in a civilized society. One can hold the idea that resolving disputes with violence is bad while also understanding the appeal of controlled violence as a form of entertainment in the year 2026.

Some people, obviously, don’t like watching human beings having their faces smashed in and bloodied. This is okay, too! America! Pluralism! If our country (or species) consisted only of brutish, aggro dudes who love breaking faces and resolving their issues with violence, it would be a hellish place to live. Are cultural elements of the UFC and its fanbase indelibly American? Of course. Is the UFC America, fundamentally? Obviously not. It’s a slice of our culture, part of what makes up the whole. I don’t know why it has to be any more grandiose than that. 

I’m probably a good example of these two sides of the American psyche: I personally enjoy the UFC. The controlled violence has an appeal that works for me, and it’s fun to watch a fight and try to guess which fighter’s particular style will prevail. It is the unpredictability and competition that make sports great and fun. But there is also a particular kind of knockout or leg-snap that makes my knees weak and requires me to look away or bite a hard object to endure it; it’s fun and crazy and unpredictable, and it’s also a little too gnarly sometimes. That’s part of the attraction, and part of the revulsion. It’s entertaining but I’m also glad when it’s over.

I carried those feelings into Sunday night, when I missed the live event because I was driving home with the Tangle team from our own live event in West Virginia (which featured no head-smashing or cage matches, for whatever it’s worth). But over the last couple days, I did catch every knockout from the night and all manner of social clips from the post-fight interviews and pre-show pomp, with the patriotic celebration of America infusing most of the evening. And my feelings about that, like my philosophy on controlled violence, are decidedly mixed.

On the one hand, I’m skeptical of the degree to which hosting a UFC fight is somehow a “desecration” of the White House. My strong suspicion is many of the people who feel that way wouldn’t have much minded a boxing match a few decades ago at the White House featuring a character like Muhammad Ali, who despite holding some pretty socially conservative views became a liberal cultural icon for his anti-Vietnam War stance. I’m even more allergic to the idea that any musical or sporting event is some new low in White House culture and integrity. Conservatives might make the case that hosting Pride events with scantily clad (or nude) celebrations are equally degrading; I’d argue events like this are hardly the issue. One shouldn’t have to invoke President Bill Clinton getting oral sex from an intern in the Oval Office to make a point, but our memories really do seem that short. 

On the other hand, those on the right pretending an aversion to this spectacle is “proof” of how sensitive and pearl-clutchy the American left is are also deluding themselves. This wasn’t a unifying event and wasn’t intended to be. This wasn’t a celebration of American history — it was a birthday party for the president dressed up as a birthday party for us. I watched a fighter stand on the South Lawn of the White House and declare that Michelle Obama, the former first lady, “is a man” on a broadcast streamed to millions of viewers. This was a disgusting and embarrassing moment, even for a political movement that relishes pushing the boundaries and “triggering” the left. As reporter Sam Youngman put it, it’d be hard to imagine the coverage if Obama hosted a “pay-per-view NBA event at the White House where LeBron called Melania a hooker.”

The hypocrisy really knows no limits here. Glenn Beck — who once called it “truly obscene” and beneath “the dignity of the office” for President Obama to do interviews with YouTubers — is now defending this spectacle as a “remarkable” homage to America and praising Trump as the ultimate “showman.” Of course, some principled right-wing figures, even the most diehard MAGA defenders (like Fox News’s David Marcus), were capable of saying “I was wrong” and the event crossed a line. 

In the end, the whole back-and-forth over what is really American or appropriate is another distraction from the biggest story, which once again is corruption and grift. The UFC announced before the fights that the Trump Organization’s cryptocurrency platform, World Liberty Financial, would pay out Sunday’s winners in part using a cryptocurrency traded on the platform, effectively leveraging the event into a giant commercial for the president’s cryptocurrency venture. Trump also used the fight to promote and sell actual Trump-branded gold coins, which he profits from selling, for as much as $12,000. Trump owns tens of thousands of dollars of stock in TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of UFC, a fact he disclosed in a May 12 financial filing while promoting the event. 

Oh, and the entire thing was streamed on Paramount+, which last year signed a $7.7 billion media rights deal with the UFC (again, a company Trump is invested in), all after the president strong-armed Paramount during its merger-and-acquisition gambits to shake up its coverage at its news networks like CBS. To spell that out: Trump applied pressure on Paramount’s potential merger, Paramount then settled a lawsuit to pay Trump off, then canceled Stephen Colbert’s show, the merger got approved, and then Paramount broadcasted an event hosted by a company Trump holds stock in and has publicly boosted. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and if you’re looking for an actual story from the UFC spectacle, I think you’ll find it there. 

The UFC is popular. The White House is not some unblemished historical artifact. Our republic can survive a night of pomp and violence. The biggest story, with wider implications, is our continued normalization of the president’s obscene profiting and grifting, and our curious ability to be distracted from it so easily. 

Take the survey: What do you think of the White House hosting a UFC fight? Let us know.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: I thought that Israel was part of our attacks on Iran. But since the war started, it seems like Israel has been more focused on Lebanon. I also heard Israel was not part of the negotiations between Iran and the U.S. How does Israel fit into the war with Iran?

— CBW from Wisconsin

Tangle: It’s probably more accurate to think of the current war in Iran as two conflicts at the same time: the war against Iran itself, and the war against Iran’s proxies, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon. In fact, as we discussed yesterday, whether or not the current memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran includes Israel or Hezbollah is a point of contention and controversy. As Abdulrahman Al-Rashed wrote in Arab News, having a peace plan apply to Hezbollah could “make Hezbollah a recognized and protected actor,” noting the same could apply to the Houthi militant group in Yemen.

The U.S. and Israel share a desire to block Iran from having a nuclear weapon, but Israel’s fight against Hezbollah isn’t one that the U.S. has joined. In fact, Israel has been fighting an all-out war against Iran’s proxies going back to its response to Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023. Hamas and Hezbollah have been Israel’s targets since day one, and the Yemeni Houthis have been involved for nearly as long. For that reason, Israel does not want a ceasefire with Iran to constrain its efforts against Hezbollah, which it says is threatening its citizens in northern Israel (and which, we should add, it is fighting in part by targeting residential neighborhoods outside Beirut). 

With respect to Iran, other than a retaliatory strike on June 7 after an Iranian attack, Israel has been adhering to the April 7 ceasefire and not engaging in direct action. That doesn’t mean that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers Israel’s conflict with Iran to be a mission accomplished, but it does mean that he’s treating that front separately from Israel’s full-scale fight against Iranian proxy groups. 

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Numbers.

• $30 million. The approximate total value of the sponsorship deals the UFC signed with companies such as Ram Trucks, Crypto.com, Polymarket, and Bud Light for Sunday’s White House UFC event. 
• 85,000. The approximate number of free tickets distributed for a watch party at the Ellipse near the White House during the event. 
• $700,000–$1 million. The amount the UFC has budgeted for repairs to the South Lawn after the event. 
• 16% and 46%. The percentage of U.S. adults who said it was appropriate and inappropriate, respectively, for President Trump to hold the UFC fights at the White House, according to a June 2026 Reuters/Ipsos poll. 
• 31%, 11%, and 5%. The percentage of Republicans, independents and Democrats, respectively, who said holding the fights at the White House was appropriate.

A deeper look.

While annual, family-friendly favorites like the Easter Egg Roll and Presidential Turkey Pardoning might be the most well known happenings on the White House’s historic South Lawn, “America’s backyard” has been home to several sports-related events throughout its history. 

President Dwight D. Eisenhower installed a putting green on the lawn in 1954 on the site of what had been President Harry Truman’s horseshoe pit. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush built a new horseshoe pit, where he played against celebrities and world leaders; he even demonstrated throws for Queen Elizabeth II. The White House Tee Ball Initiative, led by President George W. Bush, began in 2001, bringing youth teams together to compete and celebrate the sport on the South Lawn. 

But the White House’s most consequential sporting event didn’t take place on its lawn. In 1904, in a “gymnasium” somewhere inside the White House — the precise location is still unknown — President Theodore Roosevelt was punched in the left eye by his cousin-in-law Colonel Dan T. Moore during a boxing match. The president, whose pastimes also included tennis, fencing, jiu-jitsu and a sport called “singlestick,” revealed only after he left office that he had been partially blind in that eye ever since. He broke the news while speaking to reporters outside of a health camp, where he had just completed a weight-loss program. When they pressed him for details on the fight and subsequent injury, Roosevelt responded, “There is to be nothing more to say about the matter.”

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the No Kings protests and the Army’s 250th anniversary parade.
• The most clicked link in our last regular newsletter was the report that the U.S. killed the Tren de Aragua gang leader in an airstrike.
• Nothing to do with politics: The sounds of love.
• Our last survey: 2,784 readers responded to our survey on the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran with 65% saying the two sides are not making any progress. “It sounds like the situation will be less beneficial than the agreement that Trump scrapped during his first term... it’s hard to argue this is progress,” one respondent said. “If we don’t know what is actually in the ‘agreement,’ we can’t know what it will lead to,” said another.

3,120 readers responded when we asked the same question on May 12 — those responses are below.

Have a nice day.

Karl-Anthony Towns just won his first NBA championship with the New York Knicks. But throughout the series, his mind was on more than basketball. This April marked six years since his mother passed away from Covid-19 complications; Towns also lost seven other family members to the virus. The Minnesota Timberwolves, his team at the time, described his mother, Jacqueline Cruz-Towns, as “a fiery, caring, and extremely loving person, who touched everyone she met.” During the second game in the best-of-seven series, Towns looked to the sky and blew a kiss; he says he feels her support while playing. “I just felt a calm and a peace that… had to be coming from the woman above,” he said. “I do it for all my family in New Jersey that… allowed me to love this game of basketball and allowed me to be a kid with my mother.” TODAY has the story.