It was back in late May that construction began on the towering, claw-like superstructure that now sits complete on the South Lawn of the White House, ready to stage Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts on Sunday, President Trump’s 80th birthday.

The spectacle is estimated to cost more than $60 million, according to Mark Shapiro, who is the president of U.F.C.’s parent company, TKO Group Holdings. (Mr. Trump purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in TKO weeks ahead of this event at the White House that he has been promoting for months).

Here’s a look at the fighting arena.

The Claw

The Claw is a 600-ton steel arch built in Belgium. Jumbo-sized and star-spangled, with huge television screens hanging from every corner, it coexists strangely with the rest of its environs.

It towers over the old willow oaks and magnolia trees planted long ago by past presidents on the gentle slope of the South Lawn. It towers over the White House itself. Spectators seated in the topmost section on Sunday night will be on eye level with the Truman balcony.

The Octagon

This is the Octagon, the caged ring in which men will beat one another to a pulp.

The cage is an eight-sided feat of marketeering, its every angle prominently displaying the name of some sponsor who’d paid big bucks to have their brands juxtaposed against the ultimate backdrop.

Among them: Live Trade on Polymarket, Bud Light, Pit Boss Grills, Total Wireless, Morgan & Morgan (“Dial #Law”) and Toyo Tires. “Crypto.com” is carved into each metal step leading into the ring.

The Venue

The Claw is not all. That venue can only fit a little more than 4,000 people, so a space for a watch party capable of hosting more than 70,000 people has been set up on The Ellipse, which is the park just south of the White House gates.

Back on the White House lawn, just behind the Claw, there are large tents set up. On Saturday afternoon, the day before the fight, a crew of six motocross riders will be performing stunts on the lawn, including backflips 45 feet in the air.

As Democrats seek to reclaim power in November’s midterm elections, some of the party’s long-standing progressives are in danger of losing their seats.

The warning signs are flashing red in hotly contested primaries across the country, from a longtime ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who is facing a challenger four decades younger, to a senior New York lawmaker seeking to fend off a Mamdani-backed opponent.

Not every race has a clear ideological divide, but every challenger is running on an anti-establishment message. Some are also advocating for generational change. 

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Though sitting lawmakers are historically difficult to defeat, a wave of anti-incumbent fever appears to be taking hold among voters. Four incumbents — including Reps. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, and Thomas Massie, R-Ky. — have already lost their re-election bids to primary challengers this cycle.

The following are the progressive lawmakers who could be next. 

Dan Goldman 

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., 50, a prominent Trump foe who served as Democrats’ lead counsel during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, is running as an endangered incumbent in a Democratic-heavy district spanning Lower Manhattan and deep-blue pockets of Brooklyn.

Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, 56, who has the backing of Mamdani and leading progressives in Congress, is mounting an insurgent campaign from Goldman’s left. Leading progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and the left-wing Working Families Party are also supporting his candidacy.

Goldman’s endorsements from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., may not be enough to secure a third House term. Recent polling of the race shows Lander carving out a significant lead despite Goldman, who is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, outspending the progressive challenger.

Though Goldman has faced attacks from the left, he is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). He has also supported a bevy of far-left proposals, including the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Green New Deal legislation and Medicare-for-all. If Democrats retake power in November, he’s vowing to help lead a third impeachment of Trump.

But Israel has become a key fault line in the contest. Lander has sharply criticized the incumbent’s ties to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and his votes to supply Israel with military aid.

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Lander has also labeled Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” — a term Goldman has distanced himself from. Both men are Jewish.

Adriano Espaillat 

Mamdani is also seeking to flex his political muscle in another hotly contested New York City primary that could end the career of a senior progressive lawmaker.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, is facing a serious challenge from upstart candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, a socialist and activist who joined Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

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Mamdani threw a wrench into Espaillat’s re-election bid when he made the surprise decision to endorse Avila Chevalier, 32, just weeks before the primary. The move has led to fierce backlash from some of the party’s establishment, who alleged that Mamdani privately pledged to Espaillat that he would support his bid for a sixth House term, multiple outlets reported.

Espaillat, 71, is seeking to fend off a challenge from his left flank despite membership in the Congressional Progressive Caucus and his support for ICE’s dismantlement. He has also touted his background as the first former illegal immigrant elected to Congress.

Avila Chevalier has sparked controversy over since-deleted social media posts in which she voiced support for open borders, abolishing the police and called former President Joe Biden a “rapist,” according to CNN.

The deep-blue district covering parts of Upper Manhattan and the West Bronx is a progressive stronghold that swung hard for Mamdani’s mayoral campaign last year. Espaillat notably did not endorse Mamdani’s campaign until after his primary win over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y.

Jeffries, who represents a neighboring Brooklyn district, has vowed to help give Espaillat a sixth House term.

“Adriano Espaillat has been a tremendous leader,” Jeffries told CNN on Tuesday. “He’s leading in terms of battling Donald Trump.”

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., a junior member of House Democratic leadership, is gearing up for a tough re-election fight after Republicans carved up her deep-blue seat during redistricting earlier this year.

The 11-term incumbent sparked controversy after filing to run in a plurality-Black district that has been represented by a Black lawmaker for more than three decades.

She is expected to face four Black opponents ahead of the August primary, including former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., who is making a long-shot run for the seat after resigning amid an expulsion threat earlier this year. Cherfilus-McCormick is also facing a pending federal criminal indictment over alleged financial crimes that could result in more than 50 years in prison if convicted.

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Local Black leaders publicly urged Wasserman Schultz to run for a different seat, but she moved forward with seeking the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 20th Congressional District. 

While the four Black candidates have reportedly met to discuss unifying behind one individual to take on Wasserman Schultz, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has thus far declined to bail her out.

The leading Democrat has repeatedly stopped short of offering his endorsement when asked by reporters, despite his long track record of backing incumbents. Jeffries has issued effusive praise for Wasserman Schultz’s record in Congress but signaled his concern that the incumbent’s victory could potentially decrease Black representation in Congress.

“I think we all recognize the sensitivities of the moment in terms of an unprecedented Jim Crow-like assault on Black political representation that has been unleashed by the Supreme Court’s outrageous decision to gut the Voting Rights Act,” Jeffries said during a news conference earlier in June when asked about Wasserman Schultz’s candidacy. “And it’s an environment that all of us need to be sensitive to as we move forward.”

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Doris Matsui

Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., advanced to November’s general election after surviving California’s top-two primary system last week, but her leftist challenger received a higher share of the vote.

Mai Vang, 41, a progressive Sacramento city councilmember campaigning on generational change, is seeking to unseat Matsui, 81, who is twice her age. As of Thursday, Vang outperformed Matsui by one percentage point in the primary contest.

The Democratic candidates will face off for the Democratic-leaning district in November after shutting out the single Republican in the race.

Matsui has represented the Sacramento-anchored district for more than two decades and has never faced a serious primary challenger prior to Vang. Her husband, Robert Matsui, previously represented the seat for roughly 25 years prior to his death in 2005.

Matsui has long allied herself with Pelosi, who endorsed her reelection campaign for a 12th House term. She has also donated to her campaign.

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Vang is endorsed by the progressive, anti-incumbent organization Justice Democrats and Our Revolution, a group formed by Sanders staffers after his failed 2016 presidential campaign. 

She faced scrutiny during the primary contest after videos surfaced of her refusing to face the American flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance during city council meetings.

Al Green

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, one of Trump’s most vocal critics in Congress, lost his bid for a 12th House term in May.

Green, 78, came up short in a Democratic primary runoff election for a Houston-area district against Rep. Christian Menefee, D-Texas, 38. The two incumbents faced off for a Democratic-heavy district after Republicans’ redistricting efforts effectively forced both men to compete for the same seat.

Menefee, who was first elected to Congress in February, is seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party and ran on a message of new leadership.

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Green faced widespread backlash over disrupting Trump’s addresses to Congress two years in a row. After his outburst toward the president during a 2025 speech, Green was formally censured by Congress in a bipartisan vote.

Green has also repeatedly tried to impeach Trump. His most recent impeachment attempts since Trump retook office in 2025 were scuttled in part by Democratic opposition.

Trump mocked Green after his primary loss in a post on Truth Social.

“Congratulations to the Dumocrat Party!” Trump wrote. “Al Green, one of the most mentally deficient Congressmen in the history of our Country, has lost, in a landslide, his seat in Congress — but I will miss that lunatic not screaming and violently waving his cane at me during my next State of the Union Speech.”

As soon as enough votes were counted to officially knock Tom Steyer out of the California governor’s race, the anti-billionaire schadenfreude kicked in.

Social media and legacy media, conservative and liberal, all seemed to have a rare melding of the minds, delivering endless variations of, “How dare he try to buy elected office! We showed him.”

“I hope you received the message from California that a power-hungry communist billionaire cannot buy the state!” wrote one detractor on social media. “How much money did you waste spamming Californians? Do you know how many hundreds of millions of dollars you wasted?”

“What a waste,” screamed a New York Times headline, slamming Steyer for not donating that money directly to building houses or funding Planned Parenthood — one-off actions that prop up broken systems instead of changing them.

I get it.

In an age when income inequality is reaching serf-lord levels, hating the rich seems easy and reasonable. You could take several zeros off the $200 million Steyer spent on his campaign and it would still be more than most of us make in a lifetime. That’s a rage-inducing reality for many, if not most of us, for whom pairing a full tank of gas with a restaurant dinner seems like careless luxury these days.

I’m not here to defend the nine-zeroes class. But maybe we should take a beat and make sure our outrage is working for us, not against us. While Steyer has spent the last few months advocating for universal healthcare, better pay and protections for workers, and putting curbs on out-of-control corporations from the energy sector to AI, other billionaires have spent that time actively undermining democracy and our financial system. Heck, some even seem to be undermining humanity. Why aren’t we raging at them?

Take, for example, a certain billionaire who seemingly would prefer to be a trillionaire: Elon Musk.

Last week, his SpaceX held an IPO in which somehow the rules of Wall Street meant to protect small investors and pension plans were set aside to his benefit. Like it or not, if you hold a public pension or a 401(k) in America that uses index funds (which most do) you will likely be an investor in his unproven and possibly risky business. I’m sure that will work out fine.

Or consider the hundreds of millions of dollars right-wing AI and surveillance-company billionaires, some Californians, are dumping into political races across the country right now to ensure that their dangerous and unpredictable technologies are not regulated, or regulated in largely meaningless ways. It’s a situation so dire that one wealthy insider last week warned in his own op-ed that if his former colleagues are successful, “It could concentrate economic power in ways that would make the Gilded Age look quaint.”

Then there’s our president, king of self-enrichment, whose wealth has skyrocketed to more than $6 billion during his time in office. Much of that moola is in opaque cryptocurrency holdings, an industry he has championed as his fortunes in it have increased.

But don’t think Trump is in it only for himself: He’s enriching his family, too.

His daughter Ivanka recently made her own “eat cake” headlines over an alleged $1.5-billion project that would convert an uninhabited Albanian island into a luxury resort. The Albanians are so mad, they’ve been protesting in the streets for nearly two weeks. Meanwhile, her brothers have coat-tailed off their dad’s crypto-ventures to make their own fortunes, as other investors suffered losses.

Those are our individual billionaires, never mind the corporations, who can dump as much money as they want into our politics thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizen’s United decision. In 2025, the oil and gas industry in California, led by Chevron and the Western States Petroleum Assn., spent about $34 million on lobbying. Not to be outdone, the Golden State’s water and electricity interests, including PG&E, spent about $35 million to bend politics to their will.

But sure, hate the goofy guy in the vintage Nikes pointing all this out.

“I’m proud of the enemies we made,” Steyer said in his concession. “In this race, those corporations revealed that they see a government that puts working people first as an existential threat — even when proposed by a billionaire. By spending $55 million — the most ever against a single candidate in a California primary — they showed the lengths they would go to in order to protect a status quo that only serves them and their profits.”

I don’t like the amount of money in our political system either, but the truth is, it’s there. And worse, the majority of those who have it seem intent on diminishing the political and economic power of those who don’t.

We are increasingly moving toward a country where the well-being of the majority of people will depend on the largesse of the few — Silicon Valley’s tech industry now talks about a universal basic income as a great boon for the coming mass unemployment they are creating.

But is existence off a charity-pittance really what we want for ourselves and our children? Do we really want these ultra-wealthy overlords to use their money unchecked to make decisions that will shape our future, diminish our rights and ultimately leave us without the power to fight back?

If Steyer wants to use his money to join this battle to keep power by the people and for the people, then the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Like it or not, us average worker bees need money to fight money. In this age when animus eats discernment like the rich eat caviar, the luxury we really can’t afford is hating the good guys just because it’s easy — even if they’re billionaires.