{"id":1710,"date":"2026-06-12T20:07:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T20:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacksonvillemovingnews.com\/?p=1710"},"modified":"2026-06-12T20:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T20:07:22","slug":"judge-oks-trumps-ufc-fights-on-the-white-house-south-lawn-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jacksonvillemovingnews.com\/?p=1710","title":{"rendered":"Judge OKs Trump’s UFC fights on the White House South Lawn this weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A federal judge on Friday refused to stop the White House from staging a UFC show this weekend in an elaborate ring already built on the South Lawn to celebrate the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary \u2014 on President Donald Trump\u2019s 80th birthday.<\/p>\n

Read more What to know for game day at Miami Stadium during the FIFA World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling allows organizers to use the White House lawn as the venue for Sunday\u2019s planned UFC mixed martial arts event. <\/p>\n

Mehta concluded that the plaintiffs likely don\u2019t have legal standing to challenge the event and have failed to prove that they would suffer irreparable harm by the event going forward as planned. The judge also cited the plaintiffs\u2019 \u201cunreasonable delay\u201d in suing to challenge an event that\u2019s been in the works for months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the context of an emergency application \u2014 and coupled with the fact that the UFC fight date was long ago known \u2014 it is fair to say Plaintiffs unreasonably delayed bringing suit, undercutting their claims of irreparable harm,\u201d Mehta wrote.<\/p>\n

Attorneys from the nonprofit Public Integrity Project sued to challenge Trump\u2019s \u201cUFC Freedom 250\u201d event on behalf of an activist and a Vietnam War veteran. The two plaintiffs also asked the court to block organizers from building anything for the event on White House grounds, including a 92-foot-tall, 600-ton steel structure called The Claw.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs\u2019 alleged \u201caesthetic harms,\u201d the judge noted, are temporary since The Claw will be disassembled starting Monday morning and staging equipment at the Lincoln Memorial must be removed before then. \u201cThe President\u2019s musings about permanency of the Claw does not move the dial in the face of a White House official\u2019s clear representation,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

The White House called the lawsuit a baseless attempt to prevent Trump from hosting an event that\u2019s no different from many others routinely hosted at public forums in the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n

Trump’s administration can\u2019t issue permits for sporting events on the South Lawn or at the Lincoln Memorial, where UFC fighters planned to hold a press conference in front of fans on Friday, according to plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys. They noted that the event is a privately organized, for-profit business venture, with VIP packages costing millions of dollars. <\/p>\n

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\u201cThe President\u2019s administration is granting the UFC an extraordinary business opportunity it may not lawfully grant, and in exchange the UFC is throwing an event at which its leadership, fighters, advertisers, and various celebrities will all pay tribute to the President on his birthday,\u201d plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys wrote.<\/p>\n

Public Integrity Project attorney Brendan Ballou said the plaintiffs were disappointed in the judge’s decision but respect it and intend to “keep bringing cases to raise the cost of corruption in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a case about a sporting event, it\u2019s about corruption, as a handful of people and companies stand to profit from our public monuments,” Ballou said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The National Park Service and the Interior Department are named as defendants in the lawsuit. <\/p>\n

In 2019, during his first term in office, Trump became the first sitting president to attend a UFC show. Trump, a Republican, is a friend of UFC president and CEO Dana White.<\/p>\n

Mehta was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Mehta has presided over other Trump-related cases, including civil litigation accusing Trump of inciting a mob of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, a Democrat.<\/p>\n

Read more Broward prosecutors and judge to clear records in 1980s and 1990s drug stings<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling allows organizers to use the White House lawn as the venue for Sunday\u2019s planned UFC mixed martial arts event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-white-house"],"yoast_head":"\nJudge OKs Trump's UFC fights on the White House South Lawn this weekend - Jacksonville Moving News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jacksonvillemovingnews.com\/?p=1710\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Judge OKs Trump's UFC fights on the White House South Lawn this weekend - 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