Dana White likes to say he sells "holy sh*t moments for a living."

• Sunday night, the UFC CEO will attempt his magnum opus on the biggest stage in combat sports history, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

Why it matters: The UFC and President Trump have forged one of the most successful cultural alliances in modern politics, carrying mixed martial arts (MMA) from the fringe of American sports to a starring role in the country's 250th anniversary.

👀 Zoom in: For Trump, the UFC was a lifeline after the 2020 election and Jan. 6 left him radioactive to corporate America.

• White brought Trump cageside — reintroducing the defeated president as an anti-establishment icon to the young, male-heavy audience that would help power his 2024 comeback.
• Trump's instinct at moments of maximum legal vulnerability was to return to the Octagon, as the UFC calls its cage. Days after his first indictment in 2023, he appeared at UFC 287 in Miami; two days after his 2024 guilty verdict, he made his first public appearance at UFC 302 in Newark, N.J.

For the UFC, Trump's return has coincided with a cascade of rewards: a $7.7 billion rights deal with Paramount, new partnerships with the FBI and State Department, and now a fight night on the White House's South Lawn.

• UFC parent company TKO says the UFC Freedom 250 — complete with a massive fan viewing experience on the Ellipse — will cost the UFC more than $60 million and lose money on paper.
• Still, TKO president Mark Shapiro has called the first professional sporting event ever held at the White House "the greatest earned marketing tool of all time."

The big picture: UFC Freedom 250 has been cloaked in controversy and curiosity since well before construction began on the 92-foot-tall steel "Claw" now towering over the South Lawn.

1. 🥊 The sport: To fans, MMA is what Joe Rogan calls "high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences" — a full-body chess match that fuses boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu and pain tolerance into a brutal test of skill, will and nerve.

• To critics, MMA remains a bloody spectacle tied to the ugliest strains of hypermasculinity, making its arrival at the White House feel jarring even as the sport has gone mainstream.

2. 📢 The promotion: The UFC built a global sports empire by functioning as the ultimate market gatekeeper, yielding immense corporate profits even while weathering antitrust lawsuits and allegations of suppressed wages.

3. 🏟️ The event: White insists the card will be patriotic, not political, promising to "tell the story of America" through historical vignettes between fights. But almost every logistical and financial detail points back to one man.

Between the lines: The public isn't sold: A YouGov poll found 51% of Americans disapprove and just 17% approve of UFC Freedom 250.

• A watchdog group has sued to stop the event, arguing the administration approved a private spectacle on federal parkland without proper review.

Even within the UFC's Trump-friendly fan base, the alliance is showing cracks: Fans have flooded promotional posts with complaints about Israel, the Epstein files and other perceived populist betrayals by Trump.

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Axios' Barak Ravid unpacks the Iran deal President Trump says is so close that he'll dispatch Vice President JD Vance to sign it in Europe as soon as this weekend:

The U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding calls for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen immediately without tolls, and for Iran to receive sanctions relief based on compliance, according to a diplomat from one of the mediating countries and a U.S. official.

• Why it matters: The MOU would extend the ceasefire for 60 days, including in Lebanon. Nuclear negotiations would be held during that time. The text includes a framework for addressing Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, though any action on Iran's nuclear program would depend on a second, more detailed accord.

State of play: The diplomat from one of the mediating countries, who walked Axios through the latest text, said the U.S. and Iran "have agreed on the text of a deal," but acknowledged the deal still needed final sign-off.

• As of last evening, the deal had been approved on the Iranian side at high levels but likely not by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, two knowledgeable sources said.

Zoom in: The MOU calls for the strait to be reopened immediately without tolls, with a return to pre-war shipping volumes within 30 days. In return, the U.S. blockade would also be lifted.

🖊 The deal, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, will be called the Islamabad Agreement — if both sides ultimately agree to sign.

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China apparently kept the oil market from imploding in the wake of the Iran war, Axios' Emily Peck reports.

• The world's second-largest economy sharply cut the amount of oil it imports, taking the pressure off worldwide demand for the commodity and keeping a lid on prices.

💰 The big picture: Even as the conflict enters its fourth month, the price of a barrel of oil is still trading below $100 — defying predictions of $200 back in March when the war began.

• The U.S. national average for a gallon of gas is $4.11 — down 10%+ from its late-May peak.

China reduced oil consumption using three key levers:

1. Ramped up usage of electric vehicles and electric-powered rails.
2. Used coal instead of oil to produce certain chemicals.
3. Stopped aggressively stockpiling oil — as it did in the year before the war.

📈 Reality check: Energy prices are still way up since February, and have driven up global inflation.

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The Wall Street Journal named a "Best Companies For the Future" list, based on factors that include AI readiness, talent, innovation, financial strength and resilience. The top 10:

1. Nvidia.
2. Alphabet.
3. Microsoft.
4. Meta.
5. Cisco Systems.
6. Salesforce.
7. Mastercard.
8. Amazon.
9. Adobe.
10. Intuit.

Browse the full list ... How the companies were picked (gift link).

Members of Congress are scrambling to jump on the data-center opposition sweeping local communities, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.

🧮 By the numbers: Legislative proposals to restrict data center construction were fairly rare on Capitol Hill before this year. Now, Republicans and Democrats alike are flooding the zone.

• In the last three months alone, more than a dozen bills have been introduced to either investigate the impact of data centers or restrict their proliferation.

🏛️ Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill to impose an outright moratorium on new data center construction "until legislation is enacted that safeguards the public from the dangers of artificial intelligence."

🤖 Reality check: The prospect of any of these bills passing is slim.

• AI and AI-adjacent companies are spending big through super PACs in the 2026 midterms to curry favor with sitting lawmakers and get allies elected to Congress.

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With data center protests gaining momentum on Earth, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others have been eyeing outer space — with its ready supply of unimpeded solar energy — as the next frontier, Axios' Ina Fried reports.

• Tech giants like SpaceX and Google as well as some startups are already working on launching data centers into space.

How it works: In a report this week, real estate research firm JLL says it sees space as particularly suited to energy-intensive, but less urgent tasks.

• Data centers on the ground could handle real-time computing work while those in space tackle training AI models.

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Solar energy's share of the U.S. electricity mix was 12.8% last month, Axios energy expert Ben Geman tells us.

• Why it matters: It's the first time solar outpaced coal on a monthly basis, according to clean energy think tank Ember's analysis.

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A dive to catch a fly ball earned Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) the MVP title in this year's Congressional Baseball Game — along with a bloody nose and the No. 5 spot in ESPN's Top 10 Wednesday night. Rs beat Ds, 11-2.

• The game drew 35,000 fans and raised $3 million for charity.

Watch a video.