Donald Trump celebrated his 80th birthday this weekend by desecrating the White House lawn.

UFC, a company Donald Trump is invested in, held a series of cage matches on the White House lawn complete with ancillary activities like BMX stunt jumping - also on the White House lawn. The paid event was sponsored by numerous companies that do business with the United States and aired only on the subscription based Paramount Plus. Coincidentally, the Department of Justice just cleared the merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers, over the objection of staffers investigating the merger. Two of the sponsors were Trump-owned businesses — Truth Social and World Liberty Financial — Trump’s social media company and his cryptocurrency company. Instead of directly paying the fighters, the UFC paid World Liberty Financial who then paid the fighters in Trump’s own cryptocurrency. But these weren’t the only Trump businesses present. Ads ran hawking Trump products like his gold coins.

The president of the United States was selling personal merchandise and advertising the companies he owns at an event on the White House lawn run by a business he is invested in. This event aired on a paid service which needs approval from Trump’s executive branch for a massive merger. Trump is the most corrupt politician in United States history and second place isn’t even in the conversation.

Fights broke out among the crowd on the lawn. Blood spilled on the floor of the cage the men were beating each other in. One of the fighters repeated a long-running right wing conspiracy theory that Michelle Obama is a man. And all of this took place during a war which has wreaked havoc on global energy prices and oil supplies.

But I am not here to dwell on the president’s disgusting and corrupt bread and circuses. The people of the United States gave Donald Trump several birthday presents in the last few days. Let’s see what he got!

Donald Trump is the unique sort of depraved so as to want to put his own name on a memorial for another person. The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC is a memorial to president John F Kennedy and a cultural center for the city, hosting numerous musical acts, awards ceremonies, and both the National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra. Trump replaced nearly the entire board with sycophants who eventually voted to rename the building “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

The board announced the vote to rename the center was unanimous. They lied. Per the law establishing the Kennedy Center, Congress gets to designate a member to sit on the board. Ohio Representative Joy Beatty attended the meeting regarding the renaming via Zoom. When it came time to vote, she objected to the renaming, but she was kept on mute. But it would not have mattered even had the vote been truly unanimous. The name of the Kennedy Center (exactly like the Department of Defense) is set BY LAW. The board doesn’t HAVE any authority to change the name in the first place. The board also voted to close the center for two years during renovations. Rep. Beatty sued over these changes. She sued and won.

It was not legal to change the name of the Kennedy Center. Nor was it legal for them to close the building for two years. A judge ordered the removal of Trump’s name from emails, signage, stationary, the website, fundraising materials, and the building itself.

Late Friday night, in a taste of what’s to come, the crowd gathered in front of the Kennedy center cheered as a work crew removed Donald Trump’s name from the memorial it never should have been on to begin with. While this is a trivial victory compared to larger issues, it’s an important one both legally and symbolically. Trump flagrantly broke the law here. The courts and the people said no. And now the Kennedy Center’s facade will be restored, wiping the narcissist’s name from it forever. Happy birthday, Mr. President.

Trump issued an executive order in March instructing the Department of Interior to remove any signage that “disparages” America or its founders. In short, the right now believes any criticism of America at any point is sacrilegious, false, and must be censored. There are two huge issues here. Firstly is that the United States of America, and the founders, have done some abhorrent things. Examining these things does not mean a person hates America. It doesn’t even mean America is a bad country. Examining the truth of past wrongdoings is the only way to address them going forward. Republicans hate this because they don’t actually want to go forward. But like the Kennedy Center, there’s another issue with changing the signage in the way Trump ordered.

It was against the law.

There are legally required processes that must be used to change park signage as Trump ordered. Trump ignored those requirements. A judge last week ordered any changes made by the Department of Interior to be reverted. Happy birthday, Mr. President.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration cancelled renewable energy grants in sixteen states. Every single one of them voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. Similar grants in red states were not canceled. This was not the result of some careful examination of the effectiveness of the grants. This was simply retaliation against states that did not vote for Trump. The plaintiffs in this case, a coalition of various trade groups, had the good fortune of being able to point to an exact precedent. This was not the first time the Trump administration canceled grants to Harris-voting states with no other justification. The courts found THAT retaliation to be illegal and restored the funding. Naturally, the judge in this new case used the exact same legal reasoning to restore the grants cut off by the Trump administration. Happy birthday, Mr. President.

In the United States, we have never seen the degree of rampant lawlessness undertaken by President Trump. I don’t think it would be possible to tally all the ways he has blatantly ignored the law to thrust forward with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda or the depths of his flagrant corruption. We cannot stop everything, but we have seen some great and important victories lately. Expect many more next year after the Democrats take back Congress.