UFC<\/a> mixed martial arts event.<\/p>\nAttorneys from the non-profit 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 92ft-tall, 600-ton steel structure called The Claw.<\/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\u2019s 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
\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
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 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 US Capitol in 2021 on January 6, after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, a Democrat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge refused on Friday to stop the White House from staging a UFC show this weekend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-474296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}