Jane Fonda backs New York concert countering Trump White House UFC event

Jane Fonda is lining up a New York counterweight to Donald Trump’s UFC spectacle at the White House, turning the same weekend into a contest over patriotism, free expression and political identity. Her Committee for the First Amendment will stage Rise Up, Sing Out at The Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan, a venue founded in 1921 by suffragists at 123 West 43rd Street.

The concert is scheduled for June 14 and is billed as a 90-minute evening of song, solidarity and action. Julia Roberts, Lily Gladstone, Bette Midler, Patti Smith and Rufus Wainwright are among the names attached, along with Joy Reid, Sasha Allen and Broadway Inspirational Voices. The event will be streamed live, and more participants are still to be announced.

Across Washington, UFC Freedom 250 is set for Sunday on the South Lawn of the White House, with a June 12 press conference at the Lincoln Memorial and a June 13-14 Fan Fest at the Ellipse. The White House’s Freedom 250 page says July 4, 2026, marks 250 years of American Independence. That framing gives the UFC event a patriotic gloss, while Fonda’s concert answers with a cultural rebuttal rooted in dissent and democratic speech.

The Committee for the First Amendment carries historical weight. The original version was formed in 1947 during the McCarthy era to push back against government pressure on Hollywood figures, with supporters including Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. The new committee relaunched in 2025 with support from hundreds of entertainers, giving the June concert a ready-made network and a clear political purpose.

Fonda’s own activism has long moved beyond the screen. Her Fire Drill Fridays climate protests drew major attention in January 2020, including one Capitol Hill demonstration that led to nearly 150 arrests. At 88, she remains one of the few public figures whose name still carries both celebrity reach and organizing power, and the new concert fits the same pattern: performance as political language, and visibility as a form of resistance.

The result is a rare split screen in the capital and beyond it. On one side is a combat-sports show staged in federal space and tied to a presidential birthday and the country’s 250th anniversary; on the other is a concert built to defend the First Amendment by turning artists and activists into the message.