Where Children Usually Roll Eggs, There Is Now a Cage

For one single evening, the South Lawn of the White House is being transformed into a fighting arena. Seven UFC bouts celebrate Donald Trump’s eightieth birthday and the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of independence, the construction costs more than sixty million dollars, and in the end only one person will stay dry!

There is a lawn in front of the White House where children roll Easter eggs in spring and where Marine One normally lands to carry the president out of the city. That lawn is now almost entirely covered by an arena. Dusty earth has replaced the grass, and in the middle stands a cage. All of this is being built for a single evening. On Sunday, seven fights from the UFC mixed martial arts league will mark Donald Trump’s eightieth birthday and, in the same breath, the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The birth of a nation and the birth of one man merge so completely that it becomes difficult to tell whose celebration this actually is.

From a distance, the structure resembles a spaceship, as if some machine had arrived from a distant star to force America’s leader into a meeting. Up close, however, it is the league’s octagonal cage, nine meters across, carefully modeled after the octagon the UFC uses as its symbol, a stop sign tipped onto its edge and made of wire mesh with padded corners carrying the names of sponsors: Morgan & Morgan, Bud Light, Dodge Ram, Corona Extra, and Polymarket, which describes itself as the world’s largest prediction market.

Above it hangs the claw, a four sided structure rising more than twenty seven meters into the air and carrying lights, speakers, heavy cable systems, and four large screens so that spectators farther away can follow the strikes below. It does not bring to mind the claw of a cat but rather the metal grabber arm in arcade machines reaching for stuffed animals, which gives the whole thing its strange, almost extraterrestrial quality. Around it stand rows of gray folding chairs with room for more than four thousand people. The cost appears in a filing by the National Park Service, which manages the South Lawn and is defending itself in court against a lawsuit seeking to stop the event. More than sixty million dollars and tens of thousands of work hours have gone into construction. The White House insists the UFC is covering the costs, yet the same filing states that seven agencies committed substantial resources and personnel, among them the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration. So the state helps carry the celebration while calling it a private pleasure.

The fighters and their entourages, together with staff, will take over the driveway and part of the West Wing and enter the cage through covered passageways. Lightweight champion Ilia Topuria had already raised his belts into the air during media day. Anyone attending on Sunday will see, on one side, the residential section of the White House and the historic Truman Balcony and, on the other, the distant Washington Monument, all washed in rotating spotlights and perhaps later by the sweat and blood of the men fighting one another.

The surrounding spectacle is extensive as well. On Friday evening, UFC president Dana White and the fighters appear at the Lincoln Memorial to answer questions from the press, the same Dana White beside whom Trump already sat in Miami during a fight night in April. On Saturday, the fighters will ceremonially weigh in at the Ellipse, where organizers expect more than one hundred twenty thousand people to watch Sunday evening on giant screens after winning free tickets through a lottery. Stunt rider Travis Pastrana is expected to attempt a potentially dangerous backflip on a dirt bike across the lawn.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs are Susan Douglas and Paul Romano, and the defendants include the National Park Service, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and several government officials in their official capacities. The lawsuit specifically challenges the authorization and staging of UFC Freedom 250 on federal property, particularly on the grounds of the White House and, in part, around national memorial sites.

The octagon and its claw, Trump says, appeal to many people, and he has suggested the structure could remain permanently, like the Eiffel Tower, which he likes to point out was originally erected for the 1889 World’s Fair and then never removed. No one knows how seriously he means it except himself. Construction has been underway since May 20. During a tour for reporters on Thursday, grinding and hammering echoed across the grounds while cranes lifted loads overhead, although those belonged to the four hundred million dollar ballroom Trump is building next door rather than to the fights themselves. Nothing remains of the grass between the house and the seating except dusty earth that will later need reseeding unless the president actually leaves the arena standing. A large Freedom 250 sign rises between the house and the cage, and in the redesigned Rose Garden workers removed tables and yellow sun umbrellas and cleaned the floor and the colonnade leading to the Oval Office.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed an agreement with the UFC committing both sides to combat training as well as programs focused on health and nutrition intended to promote teamwork and leadership among young people around the world. Society is so divided, Rubio said, and so little still brings people together in one place at one time around a shared interest, and more of that is needed. That this common interest would consist of two men beating one another bloody inside a cage did not seem to trouble him.

In the evening, workers tested the sound system, a deep rumble and at times unsettling bass moved through the West Wing, and while the president spoke in the Oval Office for another event, the old seventies hit Boys Are Back in Town blasted in from the lawn so loudly that it accompanied his remarks. It begins Sunday at eight o’clock Eastern Time. With darkness, the claw will be lit in the colors of the flag, and the lights will cast a swirling sheet of stars and stripes across the structure. The forecast promises heat and humidity and perhaps thunderstorms. A roof attached beneath the claw is meant to keep the fighters somewhat dry, and Trump will likely watch from a protected position while everyone else will almost certainly get soaked. Even severe lightning, for which the claw would seem an inviting target, will not stop the show, White promised, saying he would not care even if it snowed.

Two hundred fifty years after the signature through which a colony declared itself free, a cage now stands on the lawn of the seat of government, paid for in part by the state, branded by beer companies and a betting market, and a cabinet secretary sells the entire thing as a cure for national division. Perhaps this cage is the more fitting emblem of these years than the eagle itself, a place where two people strike one another before the eyes of all so that everyone else can feel united for one evening. And above it hangs that arcade claw reaching for something and almost never managing to grasp it, a more honest image of power than its builders probably intended.