PoliticsWhite House UFC Attack Plot Puts Donald Trump's Ballroom Fight Back in the Spotlight
Federal officials charged suspects over an alleged UFC attack plot.
June 23 2026, Published 8:31 a.m. ET
The White House UFC event was already one of the strangest spectacles of President Donald Trump’s second term. Now, an alleged plot to attack it has become part of a separate fight over the future shape of the White House itself.
Federal officials have charged multiple people accused of discussing plans to attack UFC Freedom 250, the outdoor fight night held on the South Lawn for Trump’s 80th birthday and America’s 250th anniversary programming. The alleged plans included drones, firearms, possible sniper positions and targets tied to the event.
The Ballroom Argument Gets a New Hook
The Justice Department told the court that the proposed White House ballroom will be a security upgrade.
The arrests quickly became part of the administration’s legal defense of Trump’s planned nearly 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom. In a filing to a federal appeals court, Brett Shumate, head of the Justice Department’s civil division, argued in a new court filing that the alleged plot “demonstrates the compelling need” for the project.
The proposed ballroom’s “mass and height will shield the White House grounds from attack, and give the Secret Service the visibility needed to identify attackers,” Shumate wrote. He noted events are currently held in temporary structures that “cannot even protect highly esteemed guests from inclement weather, let alone high caliber bullets or kamikaze drones.”
The administration cited the threat in defense of a new ballroom.
The Justice Department told the court the ballroom would support “a highly sophisticated drone port and sniper nests atop the ballroom that would destroy any effort to launch such an attack.”
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A Fight Over Security and Power
Legal challenges over the project continued to mount.
The ballroom is already under legal scrutiny. A lower court concluded this spring that Trump was unlawfully moving ahead with the project, while a three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to decide whether he can proceed without congressional approval.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is challenging the project, has argued that the case is about whether Trump can make such a major change to the White House unilaterally. A lawyer for the trust, in response to the Justice Department’s brief, said Trump’s “repeated invocations of security risks at hotels, rallies, or mixed-martial-arts events” do not address the legal question before the court.
The group also noted that the UFC event “would not have even fit in the proposed ballroom.”
A Spectacle With Real Stakes
Donald Trump said he had not been briefed on the reported threat.
The alleged plot came to law enforcement’s attention after the mother of 19-year-old Tycen Proper contacted police on June 10 over concerns about her son’s behavior, including gun purchases and online conversations with a radical group. Prosecutors allege investigators later found discussions about drone launch points, sniper locations and possible targets.
Trump, asked at the G7 whether he had been briefed on the threat, said, “I haven’t heard about it.”
