On June 14, not long after this issue goes to press, President Donald Trump will host an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on the South Lawn of the White House. Ever the dime-store hype man, Trump has claimed that the White House UFC card is the “hottest ticket that I’ve ever seen.” Dubbed “UFC Freedom 250,” the event will commemorate the United States’ 250th birthday as well as Trump’s eightieth. Staged only three days after the 2026 World Cup kicks off, it’s part of a summer of sportswashing, affording Trump unprecedented opportunities to deflect attention from economic and human rights woes at home — as well as the Epstein files — while looking important on the world stage and teeing up moneymaking opportunities for his inner circle.

Karim Zidan, author of the forthcoming book on mixed martial arts In the Shadow of the Cage, calls UFC Freedom 250 a kind of “authoritarian theatre” and “a stage for MAGA mythology” that “carries shades of fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, particularly its obsession with masculinity, spectacle and nationalism.”

It’s no coincidence that this arrives at the moment the Trump regime is incinerating democracy. In fact, it signals the system intended to replace it. Earlier this year, three prominent political scientists wrote that, under Trump, the United States has “descended into competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but incumbents routinely abuse their power to punish critics and tilt the playing field against their opposition.” Under this system, “rules or regulations are enforced selectively, targeting political foes, [and] the law becomes a weapon.” To say that Trump has weaponized the criminal legal system while simultaneously unleashing agents of the state — in particular, through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids — is an understatement. Extrajudicial violence at home and abroad is now government policy.