Judge rejects legal effort to cancel White House’s UFC event
Construction continues on the Ultimate Fighting Championship “Claw” and the octagon fighting ring on the South Lawn of the White House on June 11, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The White House can host an Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the South Lawn this weekend, a federal judge ruled on Friday.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected a request to block the high-profile event brought by two Virginia residents who alleged the Trump administration’s authorization for the event was unlawful.
In his order, Judge Mehta determined that the plaintiffs failed “to establish both a substantial likelihood of standing and irreparable harm” in their lawsuit against the event.
The lawsuit alleged the event — which includes a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial on Friday, ceremonial weigh-in and concert at the Ellipse on Saturday, and the South Lawn fight on Sunday — violated National Park Service regulations, was improperly permitted, and lacked a necessary environmental review.
In his order, Judge Mehta found neither plaintiff was able to show they are “directly affected” by the event, despite their contentions that the temporary arena known as the “Claw” is “hideous” and “grotesque,” and that it diminishes their ability to enjoy the beauty of the nation’s capital in the coming days.
Mehta repeatedly picked apart the plaintiffs’ efforts to establish standing to bring the suit, in which they cited reasons including planned attendance at weekend protests and road closures near the White House that they had argued would cause them personal injury.
Even if they had been able to establish standing, Mehta said, their lawsuit failed to show the event would cause irreparable harm, and noted the “unreasonable delay” in filing the lawsuit — rejecting their explanation that the decision to sue was based on newly gathered information.
Mehta further agreed with the government that cancelling the event at the last minute would cause “substantial harm” given the amount of planning, costs and labor put into the project over the past several months.
In a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers with the Public Integrity Project had called the event a “corrupt spectacle.”
“Such a volcano of corruption, if allowed to go forward, will mark an inflection point in American history,” they argued.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice said the authorization for the event was lawful, comparing it to other events on the South Lawn like Easter Egg Roll, National Christmas Tree Lighting, state dinners, the Congressional Picnic, and a 2022 Elton John Concert.
They also argued that the plaintiffs lack standing and would not be harmed by the event.
“No one is holding Plaintiffs in a jiu jitsu lock, forcing them to watch UFC Freedom 250 against their will,” DOJ lawyers wrote on Tuesday. “The public interest does not favor allowing them to exercise a heckler’s veto, particularly at this late date.”
A Przewalski’s horse stands with a foal at the Dunhuang West Lake National Nature Reserve in Dunhuang, northwest China’s Gansu Province, on Feb. 5, 2026. (Lang Bingbing/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — There is evidence that the planet is healing amid massive efforts to mitigate climate change and fight biodiversity loss.
Once-threatened species are rebounding, lawmakers are making policy changes that increase protections against harmful practices and preservation of ecosystems has come to the forefront, according to recent events.
The wins, however, don’t cancel out the realities that the planet continues to be on a tipping point. The world is currently off track to meet the goal outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the United Nations.
The planet has entered an era of “water bankruptcy,” due to irreversible damage to water systems, according to the U.N.’s University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Deforestation is continuing to occur at a rapid rate, including 16.6 million acres of tropical primary forests lost in 2024 – equivalent to 18 soccer fields per minute, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Despite the losses, recent environmental wins prove that efforts to protect the planet and its inhabitants are working.
Threatened species are recovering
Most sea turtles are rebounding worldwide as a result of conservation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Green turtles made an especially notable recovery. Once hunted to near-extinction for their eggs – used to make turtle soup – green turtle populations have risen significantly since the 1970s, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2025 update to its Red List of Threatened Species. Their status was downgraded from endangered to least concern.
Global conservation efforts included protecting eggs, releasing hatchlings on beaches and reducing capture in fishing nets, according to the IUCN.
Endangered Central California coast coho salmon are returning to Central California’s Russian River after decades of absence – an indicator of river restoration. During the 2024 to 2025 spawning season, more than 30,000 adult coho salmon migrated to the rivers along the Mendocino Coasts – double the record-breaking number of 15,000 seen in the previous season, according to NOAA Fisheries.
A group of wild horses known as Przewalski’s horses has returned to Central Asia after being driven to near-extinction in the 1960s.
In 2024, several zoos took part in the first stages of the reintroduction of the horses to their native Kazakhstan.
Subsequent efforts brought the Przewalski’s horses to neighboring Mongolia.
Przewalski’s horses are known as the last surviving lineage of true wild horses. Their populations declined as a result of habitat loss, overhunting and hybridization with domestic horses, according to the WWF’s Natural Habitat Adventures.
Countries taking action to protect natural resources
In the U.S., the federal government under the Trump administration has taken several actions that could potentially harm the environment, including granting fossil fuel operations in the Gulf exemption from Endangered Species Act protections; the Senate voted to overturn Biden-era Arctic protections; and the U.S. Department of the Interior reached a nearly $1 billion deal with French energy company, TotalEnergies, to end the company’s offshore wind development.
But other countries are making strides in protecting vast amounts of land and water.
Earlier this year, the High Seas Biodiversity Treaty – aimed to protect 60% of the global ocean that is beyond national jurisdiction – entered into force globally.
Adopted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the treaty opened for signature in September 2023 and could safeguard marine ecosystems beyond national borders.
In July 2026, Ethiopia launched a national campaign to plant 700 million trees a day, aiming to plant 50 billion trees by the end of 2026.
The I-25 Greenland wildlife overpass near Larkspur in Colorado opened in December 2025. The overpass is the largest in the U.S. and will allow elk, pronghorn, mule deer, black bears, mountain lions and a variety of other species to cross, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.
Italy will ban the killing of male chicks starting in 2027, ending the deaths of 34 million birds every year. Male chicks are often killed because they cannot produce eggs.
Poland, once the largest fur-producing country in Europe with mink, fox, chinchilla and raccoon dog farms housing around 3.4 million animals, has banned fur farming. The European Union is considering a union-wide ban on fur production.
Burbank police caption: Sergio Fraire has been arrested and booked for murder and attempted murder in Burbank, California, according to police. (Burbank PD)
(BURBANK, Calif.) — A man is in custody for allegedly stabbing a woman to death and stabbing and wounding her daughter, according to authorities in Los Angeles County, California.
Officers responded around 6 a.m. Monday, to a house in Burbank where they found two women suffering from stab wounds, Burbank police said.
The mother, 59-year-old Arti Varma, who taught first-grade in Burbank, died at the hospital, police said.
Her 25-year-old daughter was hospitalized in stable condition, police said. Authorities did not release the daughter’s name, but a neighbor identified her as Meera Varma, a nationally recognized mental health activist, according to Los Angeles ABC station KABC.
Detectives identified 30-year-old Sergio Fraire as a person of interest, and on Monday night, officers served a search warrant at a Burbank home where he was believed to be staying, police said.
Fraire was apprehended and arrested for murder and attempted murder, police said.
“The relationship, if any, between the suspect and the victims remains under investigation, as does the motive,” police said in a statement on Tuesday.
Authorities noted that “evidence related to the crime was recovered,” but they did not elaborate on the potential evidence.
Karen Read and Alan Jackson greet her supporters after she is acquitted on many of the charges against her on June 18. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald via Getty Images)
(Canton, Mass.) — Karen Read has filed a lawsuit against Massachusetts State Police and the Canton Police Department nearly a year after she was acquitted of killing her police officer boyfriend.
Prosecutors had accused Read of fatally hitting John O’Keefe with her car outside of another officer’s home and leaving him to die in a blizzard in January 2022, to which she pleaded not guilty.
Her first trial ended in a hung jury. In her second trial she was found not guilty of the most serious charges, including second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene after an accident resulting in death.
The jury did find her guilty of operating under the influence of liquor. The judge immediately sentenced her to one-year probation, the standard for a first-time offense.
In the lawsuit filed Thursday, Read claims she was “wrongfully prosecuted” for the death of O’Keefe — a Boston Police officer — costing her employment and leading to reputational damages, millions of dollars in legal expenses and serious emotional and physical distress and injury.
In the lawsuit, Read alleges that two former officers assigned to the case, former Massachusetts Police Officer Michael Proctor and former Canton Police Officer Sean Goode, were “misogynist bigots” who led a “conflicted and corrupt ‘investigation'” into the death of O’Keefe.
The suit listed some of the text messages found on Proctor and Goode’s phones with sexist and racist remarks that came under scrutiny during the course of Read’s criminal trials.
Proctor previously said he developed strong negative feelings about Read “as the case went on,” in an interview with ABC News. He said he “shouldn’t have” expressed his emotions in that way and should not have texted his friends about the case, calling the texts “regrettable.”
In a statement Friday, an attorney for Proctor pushed back against Read’s claims and maintained that there is “overwhelming” evidence that Read killed O’Keefe by “backing up and striking him” with her vehicle while “highly intoxicated.”
“The focus on anything other than Ms. Read’s own conduct on the night Officer O’Keefe was killed is as telling as it is predictable. Events in Mr. Proctor’s personal life have been reviewed, ad nauseum, by a grand jury, the District Attorney and the Massachusetts State Police,” Matthew Hamel, Proctor’s attorney in the Karen Read case, told ABC News in a statement.
“It is a matter of undisputed fact that anything Mr. Proctor did or said in his personal life, years before Officer O’Keefe was killed, had no bearing whatsoever on the investigation of Karen Read,” Hamel said.
In a statement Thursday, Massachusetts Police said Proctor’s comments are “not tolerated within our ranks.”
“These disturbing messages are entirely inconsistent with any basic standard of decency and certainly with the expectations of a Massachusetts State Trooper. These racist, sexist and abhorrent comments absolutely do not reflect the values of the Massachusetts State Police and are not tolerated within our ranks. They underscore and fully support my decision to terminate Michael Proctor,” Massachusetts State Police Col. Geoffrey Noble said in a statement to ABC News.
Noble also recognized that “this misconduct harmed the public trust on which our mission depends.”
An attorney for Proctor did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment Thursday. Attorney information for Goode was not immediately available Thursday.
The Town of Canton said in a statement Thursday it “learned of a lawsuit filed by Karen Read from the news media and via a press release issued by Read’s legal team. Town Counsel had previously attempted to communicate with Read’s legal team as to the status of her claim, but received no response at the conclusion of the notice period.”
“The Town has not been served, and as such we have nothing to review with legal counsel at this time,” the statement added.
The statement went on to say, “The Town of Canton has the utmost faith and confidence in the new leadership of Canton Police Department under Chief Michael Daniels, and we would refute any broad stroke characterizations about the brave and dedicated men and women who serve in the Department. The Department has made significant strides forward over the past two years, including the acceptance and implementation of findings and recommendations in the outside audit report.”
Read’s suit alleges that the officers began “targeting and framing the female outsider, Ms. Read” after the owners of the house where O’Keefe was found in the front lawn “falsely” told police he never entered the house.
In a statement to ABC News in 2023, the prosecutors said, “There was no conspiracy or coverup. Such claims have been systematically refuted by evidence submitted to Norfolk Superior Court.”
Proctor denied fabricating evidence in the June 2025 interview with ABC News, saying “there is no evidence of it.”
Goode said during his testimony at the trial that he stood by his investigation in the case.
In the lawsuit, Read alleges that O’Keefe had gone into the house of fellow cops and friends Brian and Nicole Albert and claimed that there were signs of dog bites and scratches on his arm and a laceration on his head that “could have only come from a backwards fall on a ridged surface in the house.”
The prosecution said in its statement to ABC News that, according to O’Keefe’s cellphone GPS records and 11 witness statements, O’Keefe never entered Albert’s home. The medical examiner found “no signs of Mr. O’Keefe being involved in any type of physical altercation or fight.”
The Alberts previously said in a statement after Read’s acquittal that they “mourn with John’s family and lament the cruel reality that this prosecution was infected by lies and conspiracy theories spread by Karen Read, her defense team, and some in the media.”
“Today, our hearts are with John and the entire O’Keefe family. They have suffered through so much and deserved better from our justice system,” the statement at the time said.
Read’s suit alleges that Proctor and Goode’s investigative approach was born out of “singling out and vilifying an outsider while protecting the ‘blue line’ and their families.”
Goode resigned this week while on paid administrative leave from the Canton Police Department amid an outside investigation into alleged misconduct, the Boston Herald reported. The resignation does not alter the completion of the investigation and the results will still be submitted to the town and the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, the town of Canton told ABC Boston affiliate WCVB.
Read’s suit criticizes police for not searching the home where O’Keefe was found for blood, fingerprints or DNA evidence. Police only entered the “crime scene house” a week later, according to the suit.
Prosecutors said that evidence shows O’Keefe never entered the home and was not murdered by anyone inside the residence, alleging his injuries were sustained by Read hitting him with her car. Prosecutors insisted that those gathering inside the house had no idea O’Keefe was outside until he was discovered the next morning.
Read is asking the court for a ruling against Massachusetts State Police and Canton Police, an unspecified amount of damages to be calculated at trial and attorney’s fees.
