Here’s Who’s Actually Going to Trump’s Birthday UFC Match

The president’s $60 million, made-for-TV birthday brawl isn’t drawing any prominent names.

The UFC is hosting its America 250 celebration on Sunday, June 14—Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. It will be the first ever cage match on the White House lawn, but even the organization’s biggest celebrity fans seem to be backing out of the historic event.

So far, the guest list includes first lady Melania Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and his new wife Bettina Trump, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, and Eric and Lara Trump, according to insiders that spoke with the New York Post.

Ringside seats for nonmilitary personnel are exclusively invite-only. The president has reportedly invited 1,000 guests to the event, while UFC CEO Dana White and TKO CEO Ari Emanuel have been allocated 200 tickets each.

But A-listers are reportedly skipping this card. Many of White’s famous invitees, such as Adam Sandler, Jared Leto, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Mario Lopez, are reportedly dodging the visual, reported Vanity Fair. White also invited Guy Ritchie, Tom Brady, and Jason Statham, though their representatives have not responded to inquiries about their possible attendance.

Part of that could boil down to cost. While watching the fight from screens at the White House Ellipse will be free to some 85,000 members of the viewing public, ringside attendance is exclusive to military and VIP tickets. And invitees might not want to shell out for it.

That latter category has been bundled into “ultra-premium” packages that cost as much as $1.5 million. The deal includes access to multiple UFC events, reserved seating on the White House lawn, VIP receptions, and floor tickets to UFC 329, which pits Conor McGregor against Max Holloway for the second time on July 11.

Luck does not seem to be on the president’s side for his multimillion-dollar birthday extravaganza, either. The whole kit and caboodle could get rained out: Washington is expecting showers Sunday evening.

The U.S. annual inflation rate is the highest it’s been in three years—a clear consequence of President Trump’s widely unpopular, very expensive war on Iran, which drags on even as he constantly claims that he’s close to a deal.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Wednesday that the consumer price index rose 0.5 percent last month, with energy costs accounting for 60 percent of that increase. The annual inflation rate is at 4.2 percent—the highest since April 2023.

“Americans are getting squeezed financially by inflation that’s back at a three-year high,” Navy Federal Credit Union chief economist Heather Long told CNBC. “The frustration for many Americans is that so many of the basics are up in price right now—gas, food, electricity, and medical care are all clear pain points that are above 3 percent inflation. Ending the war in Iran will help to moderate inflation, but the worst is likely still to come for rising food prices.”

Trump, for his part, has claimed that Iran will “pay the price” for not making a deal. But it’s clear at this point that Iran is willing to draw this conflict out so that American’s pockets hurt more and more every day. It’ll be a difficult sell to midterm voters with inflation at a three-year high and a cost-of-living crisis that was already dire—two issues Trump ran on solving. And it’s entirely his fault.

President Trump is losing his mind over a New York Times report detailing how the White House panicked over Jeffrey Epstein in multiple instances.

Early Wednesday morning, MS NOW host Joe Scarborough mentioned the report on his show, Morning Joe. Less than an hour later, Trump attacked Scarborough on Truth Social, calling him “one of the most inaccurate detailers of truthful facts on television.”

“His serious case on Trump Derangement Syndrome, often referred to as TDS, has made him a laughing stock among those who know what is going on in the ‘Wonderful World of Television,’’’ Trump posted.

Scarborough’s show was still going on after Trump dropped his post, and the hosts called him out for basically confirming the Times’ reporting that mentioning Epstein triggers the White House.

“Sometimes I go talk to you in the White House, and we disagree on things, but nothing deranged here, sir, unless you’re deranged,” Scarborough said to Trump. “If there’s any derangement, it would have to be on your side of the relationship, because I’m not deranged. Not about you. I just state the facts, and maybe that makes you deranged.

“Ohhhh, that actually sort of affirms the reporting that this is something you cannot mention around the president of the United States,” Scarborough added. “We just read what Maggie and Jonathan wrote about Epstein. Is that what that was?”

The Times article is a detailed look at how Trump’s inner circle met in the Situation Room to handle each development regarding Epstein and the government’s files on the billionaire sex offender. Shouting matches, arguments, efforts to get different officials fired, and clashing strategies are all outlined in the article, which is based on reporting from the forthcoming book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. The main thesis of the article is that Trump could not make the public forget about Epstein, no matter what he did, and he continued to prove that Wednesday morning.

President Donald Trump is spiraling over Iran’s latest military strikes, which undermine his claims that their military has been obliterated.

Hours after the United States and Iran exchanged their latest series of military strikes Tuesday night, Trump insisted yet again that Iran’s military was all but destroyed.

“Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore—They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday morning.

“The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”

It’s not evident that Iran’s military has been defeated. U.S. officials said Iran downed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter Monday using a drone. It is not clear if the drone attack was deliberate, as Iran has not yet claimed responsibility for the strike. Tehran said it responded to U.S. retaliatory strikes with 21 attacks against American military targets in the Middle East.

Trump has been insisting for weeks that Iran’s military capabilities have been obliterated—despite reporting suggesting Iran has been rebuilding its arsenal. Now even Fox News is starting to doubt the president’s word about Iran’s military capability.

Trump’s warning that Iran would “pay the price” caused the price of oil to rise 2 percent, after the strikes had already caused stock futures to slide sharply. In a subsequent post, Trump touted the effectiveness of the U.S. military blockade and insisted that energy was flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.

“The Fake News Media refuses to report how EFFECTIVE the U.S. Naval BLOCKADE is, the most successful Blockade in the history of Naval Warfare. NOTHING GETS THROUGH unless we want it to. IT IS A STEEL WALL! Iran is doing ZERO business, not paying their military, or any of their bills, and quickly becoming a FAILED NATION! Lots of oil is getting out.” Trump wrote.

But it seems that the president’s lies about the war may be finally catching up to him.

Donald Trump’s deportation agenda will now have billions of dollars to play with thanks to Republican handiwork.

The House GOP eked out $70 billion in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection Tuesday evening through the budget reconciliation process, bypassing the need for any Democratic support. The Secure America Act’s final vote was 214–212. The president is poised to sign the bill into law Wednesday.

The final draft of the bill grants $38 billion to ICE, $26 billion to CBP, and $5 billion for additional contingency costs that are to be doled out at Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s discretion. It is expected to fund Trump’s aims of one million yearly deportations through the end of his term.

The package is the result of a four-month stand-off between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of regulating the two violent and apparently unbridled agencies. That issue was sparked nearly half a year ago, when federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens during an ICE crackdown in Minnesota: Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Liberal lawmakers argued that agents should be mandated to meet the minimum standards expected of other law enforcement agencies, such as requiring them to identify themselves, operate without masks, and obtain judicial warrants before forcing their way onto private property.

That was apparently too great an ask of the Republican caucus, which vehemently opposed the measure and, ultimately, found a way to force the funding package without its Democratic colleagues.

But even this stopgap may not be enough to avert another potential government shutdown: Both parties will need to work together in the coming months to pass government funding measures by a September 30 deadline. Otherwise, they risk stalling federal options mere weeks before a fateful midterm election—a threat that both parties are attempting to use to their advantage.

Yet the massive spending bill is effectively supplemental funding: Last summer, Congress provided nearly $140 billion in immigration enforcement funding for the two agencies via Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act. That virtually tripled ICE’s budget, jumping its appropriations from roughly $9.6 billion to $30 billion (at cost to programs such as Medicaid, which was gutted in the same stroke).

Prior to Trump’s second administration, the annual budgets for both agencies totaled about $17 billion.