Donald Trump is once again using taxpayer resources to throw himself a birthday party. Last year, it was a sparsely attended military parade on the National Mall. This year, the president wants blood sport, hosting an exclusive, open-air UFC event on the South Lawn of the White House that is estimated to cost upwards of $60 million. But while the president and his guests enjoy a night of man-on-man action at the White House, artists and celebrities will be hosting a benefit concert protesting the American Nero’s personal circus.
“Rise Up Sing Out” will take place on June 14 in New York City, and feature headline artists and speakers including Rufus Wainwright, Bette Midler, Patti Smith, Joy Reid — with watch parties being planned across the county. Ticket sales for the concert will benefit the Committee for the First Amendment, an alliance of celebrities, actors, and artists formed during the McCarthy era, and brought back last year.
The group was revived by actress and longtime activist Jane Fonda. Her father, the actor Henry Fonda, was a vocal opponent of the Hollywood Blacklisting conducted by the entertainment industry under pressure from the Republican anti-communist Red Scare led by former Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.) Fonda helped found the committee as a public show of support to the “Hollywood Ten,” 10 directors and screenwriters who were held in contempt by Congress after refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Jane Fonda will headline the concert, which will be held at New York City’s Town Hall, an auditorium founded by New York suffragists in the 1920s with a capacity for 1,500. (It was famously the site where Margaret Sanger — the founder of Planned Parenthood — was arrested at an educational meeting on birth control.) Last year, Fonda, now 88, announced the reformation of the committee at an ACLU event, saying that the need for organized protest and participation from the arts transcended Trump, who she describes as a fascist. “It’s not [just] Trump. If Trump died, we’d get another one,” like him, she said.
“We’ve gone past the period of protests. I mean, it’s protests are good because they remind us that we’re not alone, but the people in the White House, they’ll just wait us out. They don’t care,” she said. “What we have to do now is called non-cooperation.”
The event is also being promoted by the organizers of the massive No Kings protests that have in the past been timed to coincide with events promoted by Trump — including his birthday parade in 2025.
Ezra Levin — co-founder of Indivisible, one of the primary organizations behind the No Kings movement — explained to Rolling Stone that given the attention surrounding the UFC event, and the fact that it will effectively be closed to the public, prompted the coalition of activists to “throw in on something so people can give their attention to something else, ideally something with a pro-democracy bent.”
In a break with longstanding tradition and the bounds of American ethics laws, the White House event will be packed with corporate sponsorships — including Crypto.com, Dodge Ram, Bud Light, and Polymarket. Historically, White House ethics officers have avoided giving the impression that corporations can secure access to the president and his government through donations and sponsorships, but those standards have been drowned in the Potomac during the Trump presidency.
Reported attendees to the UFC event include the Trump family, Jared and Ivanka Kushner, members of Trump’s cabinet, a whole host of right wing celebrities and influencers, and hundreds of military members (if they meet the strict physical fitness requirements set by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.)
The fights will almost certainly take place on Sunday, but in a last-ditch effort to rain on Trump’s parade — outside of the wet and muggy forecasted weather in Washington D.C. this weekend — one organization has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to shut the whole thing down.
“The number one thing Trump wants now, as he always wants, is all attention on him,” Levin tells Rolling Stone. “That’s why he’s throwing himself this birthday party, too, with a whole bunch of donors and attendants, because he’s always looking to make some money on whatever grift he’s got going on.”
“I think it’s important for us to continue to hammer the message that he clearly cares about himself and enriching himself and his buddies,” he added. “If we’re going to stop him, we’ve got to focus on organizing our own communities.”
