The Tiny Problem That Could Bring Down Trump’s Giant UFC Birthday Bash

The White House UFC tournament’s biggest problem might be just a few millimeters in size.

The UFC is hosting its America 250 celebration on Sunday, June 14—Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and Flag Day—on the White House’s South Lawn. But in an unexpected turn of events, bugs are likely to be the major opponent during the executive mansion’s first ever cage match.

University of Maryland entomologist Michael Raupp told Axios Friday that the odds of a winged invasion during Sunday’s festivities was 100 percent.

“This event is going to draw a big crowd,” Raupp said. “But guess what? There are going to be even more bugs joining.”

The swarm will include midges, mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, winged beetles, “a whole cadre of night-flying moths,” mosquitos, and possibly biting black flies. The buzz will also serve as a banquet for bats that feed on small, flying insects.

The unfortunate reality of the grounds has not been lost on UFC President Dana White, who told Boardroom that he had encountered a “holy shit” level of gnats during a visit last month to the White House’s recently renovated Rose Garden (an artifact of Jackie Onassis’s gentle touch that Trump has since paved with concrete).

“The amount of gnats that were flying around, I’m like, ‘Holy shit’,” White said.

“As soon as I got on the plane, I called my head of production and said, ‘Let me tell you about the gnat situation.’”

Fighters in the octagon will be lit by an enormous, five-ton lighting rig that includes more than 175 square feet of LED lighting—a setup that White observed would be the perfect magnet for all sorts of flying insects.

Beyond that, the bugs could cause a sticky problem between fighters. “In your nose, in your mouth while you’re trying to fight,” White noted while lamenting the complicated nature of outdoor events. He added that his team was considering installing large fans around the cage to keep the bugs away from the action. Those in attendance, however, are unlikely to find similar reprieve.

Mother Nature has other challenges in store for Trump’s birthday bash, as well. Washington is expected to be hot and muggy this weekend, with possible thunderstorms on Sunday evening that could affect the 8 p.m. main card.

White has told reporters that the show will go on, no matter if there’s rain, snow, or “even lightning.”

“You guys all played sports when you were growing up,” White said Wednesday. “Whenever there was lightning, you’d sit the lightning out. When it was over, you played. That’s what we’ll do.”

The Trump administration came incredibly close to putting boots on the ground in Iran to seize enriched uranium, according to reporting from CNN.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine was briefed on the plan last month before briefing President Trump himself. But Trump apparently put the plan on hold given the high potential for U.S. casualties and increased Iranian aggression—a massive risk for his political standing in the midst of a widely unpopular war.

“It would be insanely difficult to fish through those tunnels and all the barrels,” an anonymous source told CNN. “We’d have to set up a massive presence. Essentially, we’d have to invade.”

An invasion would most certainly ensure an Iranian response, either economically—through the continued closing of the Strait of Hormuz—or militarily, by continuing to attack U.S. allies in the region, like Israel and the UAE.

Senate Republicans on Thursday shot down efforts to keep federal troops from getting involved in federal elections.

Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee first killed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, proposed by Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin, that would have prohibited using Pentagon funds to deploy the military to seize ballots, voting machines, voter rolls, or any other election materials. The NDAA is the fiscal year’s main funding bill for the military.

After that effort failed, Slotkin proposed another amendment that would have required the Pentagon to notify Congress if troops were deployed to polling places for any reason other than repelling “armed enemies of the United States.” But even that was too much for Republicans on the committee.

“I introduced these amendments to protect our free and fair elections from military interference,” Slotkin told MS NOW. “It’s deeply concerning that none of my Republican colleagues on the committee voted to include it.”

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal agreed, calling the committee’s party-line votes a worrying sign for November’s midterm elections.

“Republican opposition to barring use of federal troops at the polls is deeply alarming, signaling this extreme step is part of Trump’s agenda to suppress voting,” Blumenthal said. “I’m fearful about it portending illegal domestic deployment of our military.”

Last year, Slotkin was among several Democratic members of Congress who urged members of the military not to follow illegal orders from the Trump administration, and she said that her amendments included language reaffirming that.

“I introduced these amendments to protect our free and fair elections from military interference and intimidation, and importantly, to protect the military and service members from the exact kind of illegal orders I warned about last year,” Slotkin said to MS NOW.

President Trump always claims fraud whenever Republicans don’t perform well in an election, and his allies in the Senate don’t seem willing to check his worst impulses. Refusing to pass what would seem to be obvious affirmations of existing laws suggests that these Republicans would let Trump use the military to overturn elections if he wants.

The “Trump Kennedy Center” appears to be no more.

Scaffolding has gone up around the storied performance venue to remove the “Trump” part of the “Trump Kennedy Center” name, which President Trump changed without congressional approval late last year. A judge ruled the decision illegal last month and rejected the administration’s bid to reverse the division on Friday.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote.

Trump has been particularly hostile toward the lauded cultural center, from firing all of its board members and replacing them with sycophants to slapping his own name on the building. His takeover led to dozens of artists dropping out of planned performances, which in turn led ticket sales to plummet.

Massive crude oil tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma—the main hub of America’s energy market—are reportedly growing dangerously depleted as President Donald Trump’s war in Iran stretches into its 105th day.

The oil tanks in Cushing held an inventory of just 21.6 million barrels Friday, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s a little more than half of the 40 million barrels they usually store. When they hold less than 20 million barrels of oil, Cushing’s tanks are effectively empty, with only largely unusable sludge remaining.

The extended closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed the reserves in Cushing toward operational stress levels, where they will be unable to fulfill the demand for oil.

Cushing isn’t the only place in the United States where oil reserves have been affected. Gas inventories have fallen 5 percent below where they were a year ago, and U.S. diesel stockpiles have hit their lowest level since 2003.

The full shock of the present energy crisis has been dampened by the world’s oversupply of oil—but that could be about to change, as stockpiles drain around the world. If the oil markets get dry enough, the volume of oil won’t be great enough to produce the pressure needed for pipelines. Within a month, the world’s oil market could enter the danger zone, CNN reported Friday.

Earlier this week, industry officials warned the White House that gas prices could spike yet again due to rapidly diminishing inventories, which could be wiped out in a matter of weeks.

Maybe Trump could fill some of these tankers with the 100 million barrels of oil he claims to have miraculously moved through the strait without Iran noticing.