Good morning. Donald Trump has put himself at the very centre of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations – more on that below, along with Ottawa’s spendy new AI strategy and Serena Williams’s tennis comeback. But first:

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It’s Trump’s party, and he’ll host a cage match if he wants to.

For the past year, the U.S. President has promised a UFC fight on the White House lawn, tied for some reason to America’s 250th anniversary. The event was initially scheduled for July 4 – the climax of Washington’s semi-quincentennial celebrations – but it moved last fall to some time in June, then got nailed down in March for June 14, which happens to be Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. He insists this is just a coincidence.

Last week, construction began on the UFC arena. The colossal star-spangled arch is mostly built already, and underneath, there will be a fenced-in octagon fight cage surrounded by a red-white-and-blue stage, two giant TVs and seats for 4,000 people. Oh, and ringside bleachers that’ll hold a full marching band. Another 85,000 people can apparently watch the six fights from the nearby grounds of the Ellipse.

Predictably, this spectacle hasn’t gone down well with Democrats: California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office wrote on X, “Mr. President, we just want lower gas prices.” But the fight doesn’t seem to be dazzling Trump’s demographic, either. A new CNN poll found that his approval rating has cratered with men aged 18 to 30, a massive 56-point swing among the voters who helped elect him in 2024. Even podcast host Joe Rogan – who will call the UFC fight – isn’t sold on the idea. It’s “weird to have a fight at the White House in the middle of a [expletive] war,” he said on his show, later criticizing the event as “kind of a gimmick.”

Trump is undeterred. “At first I thought, ‘That’s not nice,’” he told Time about Rogan’s comments. “And then I realized, it is a gimmick. Life is a gimmick, if you think about it, right? But it’s a good gimmick.”

Dropping out

It’s great that Trump can be so sanguine about his birthday cage match, because he threw an absolute fit over his concert series slated for the July 4 weekend. Last Wednesday, Freedom 250 – the group Trump created to run the anniversary celebrations – unveiled nine musical acts, including Martina McBride, The Commodores and C+C Music Factory. The problem: Most of those artists are now upset about the partisan nature of the bash. Within 48 hours, seven of the nine acts had bailed, leaving just Vanilla Ice and former Milli Vanilli frontman Fab Morvan. (Milli Vanilli’s actual vocalists said they wouldn’t go.)

Trump quickly contended on Truth Social that he didn’t want these performers at his party anyway. In one post, he called them third-rate artists; in another, he said they were boring and overpriced. He also urged scrapping the concerts altogether in favour of a MAGA rally, with a much-improved headliner for the occasion: Donald J. Trump.

Cashing in

Trump hasn’t been on much of a winning streak in Washington lately. After a political uproar, he’s now backing off plans for the US$1.8-billion “weaponization” fund, widely seen as a way to funnel money to Jan. 6 rioters. Construction on his beloved ballroom is currently held up in congressional battles, while the Reflecting Pool repairs he demanded are over budget and behind schedule. Plus, on Friday, a federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to remove Trump’s name from its building.

The President’s pocketbook, however, has fared considerably better. In the first quarter of 2026, his stock portfolio executed roughly US$100-million in trades, including shares of Lockheed Martin (which recently got a US$4.7-billion defence contract for its missiles) and Dell (which scored $9.7-billion for its computer software). In March, Trump also bought stock in TKO Group Holdings – the parent company of UFC. “President Trump only acts in the best interest of the American public,” the White House said about the purchase. But he’s clearly invested in his birthday cage match going off without a hitch.

After announcing in 2022 that she was “evolving away” from tennis, 44-year-old Serena Williams said she’ll play doubles next week at Queen’s Club, a warm-up for Wimbledon. Read more here about her comeback – which sounds like it could be with Canada’s Victoria Mboko.

At home: Ottawa will launch a new investment fund to support AI startups and add hundreds of millions of dollars to a program that helps Canadian companies build and run AI models.