U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to deliver remarks at Rockland Community College in Suffern, New York, U.S., May 22, 2026.
According to new reporting from NOTUS, President Donald Trump’s decision to host a UFC fight at the White House means a “summer of stress” for the Secret Service, adding to “one of the most demanding security calendars in the agency’s history.” Facing much scrutiny following multiple assassination attempts and a number of recent shootings, one former Secret Service official says the agency is preparing for what amounts to “a violent Easter Egg Roll.”
The UFC fight on the White House South Lawn is arguably the biggest event that has the Secret Service busy, but it is far from officials’ only concern. According to NOTUS, “They’re also looking ahead to a summer packed with high-level protective operations, including America’s 250th anniversary festivities, World Cup events in 11 U.S. cities and a heavy travel schedule for Trump and Vice President JD Vance.”
Then, just last week, Trump added more to his security force’s already stacked agenda: the so-called “Rally to end all Rallies” that will replace the 250th anniversary concert series that has collapsed in humiliating fashion after nearly all its musical performers backed out. Now, with just two weeks until the event, Secret Service officials are scrambling to sort out details like stage security, line-of-sight mitigation and other considerations.
“Taken together,” reports NOTUS, “current and former officials say the crush of assignments has made 2026 feel like a presidential election year, when campaigning, party conventions, and more officials needing protection combine to put immense strain on the already-overstretched agency.“
“It’s never been experienced before, even when former President Obama was running against John McCain and he was attracting tens of thousands of people wherever he went,” said retired Secret Service leader and event security expert Robert Pacsi. “There’s this constant kind of campaign tempo.”
According to NOTUS, “The slew of events could compound the agency’s ongoing struggle to manage staff burnout, attrition of experienced agents and an ever-expanding protective mission. Last year, service officials launched a massive hiring effort to bolster agent and officer ranks ahead of what is certain to be a grueling cycle in 2028. But many agents with deep experience in protective operations have left the agency in recent years, and more are expected to depart soon, leaving their less experienced counterparts to manage complex assignments.”
The UFC fight has proven a particularly complex security endeavor, requiring the Secret Service to closely monitor the construction process and conduct extensive planning in the run-up to the event, preparing agents for any eventuality. According to one ex-official, the process is much like other large-scale White House events.
“It’s a violent Easter Egg Roll,” explained ex-Secret Service supervisor Paul Eckloff. “It may be far more polarizing than the Easter Egg Roll, and it’s a spectacle, but it breaks down to the same manageable things in terms of managing the crowd, setting up magnetometers, coordinating entry for VIPs and the press.”
Even so, security experts told NOTUS that “extreme vigilance would be essential given the popularity of mixed martial arts and a broader threat environment in which risks to Trump and other public officials remain high.”
“The copycats are real, and they’re coming,” said James Hamilton, a private security consultant and former FBI supervisory special agent. “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner video of the shooter is very concerning because it’s something that the bad guys can observe and say, ‘OK, this is how close you can get.’ The Secret Service has got to bump that security perimeter way out — and they will.”