News: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is pushing to host an IndyCar race on the National Mall in August as part of the America250 celebration, according to multiple sources familiar with the effort.
The race would start at the Supreme Court and cover a full lap around the National Mall, including the Lincoln Memorial. “Pit Row” would be by the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Organizers are targeting Aug. 21 for the event.
There’s only one problem: Congress has to approve legislation to make it happen. That seems increasingly unlikely since Democrats aren’t thrilled about the idea.
Congress needs to pass a bill for the race because there’s a ban on advertising on the Capitol grounds. IndyCar vehicles are famously adorned with lots of ads.
The Grand Prix idea has made its way to aides of the Big Four — Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Democrats are worried about the strain it would place on both the U.S. Capitol Police and area roads. Plus, Democrats feel as if Republicans haven’t been helpful to them. Why should Democrats assist Republicans with this if the GOP has refused to hang any plaque honoring the victims of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, one aide said to us.
Several Democrats told us that it seems absurd for Congress to OK an IndyCar race in D.C. when lawmakers won’t even extend health care subsidies for millions of Americans.
Here’s a DOT spokesperson:
“The Grand Prix is an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate our nation’s proud racing pedigree, showcase the beauty of the National Mall, and generate millions in critical tourism revenue for the Capital. … We’ll keep working with our partners in Congress to outline the positive impacts it will have on the District and correct the record.”
A win for the leaders. On Nov. 12, the longest shutdown in U.S. history ended in a tidal wave of bitter recriminations and finger-pointing. Lawmakers then set up another funding deadline on Jan. 30. Many predicted another shutdown was possible, if not likely.
Yet instead, the opposite happened. On Thursday night, the House passed the final four appropriations bills for the year. The Senate is expected to approve the bills next week, though progressives will put up a fight over the Homeland Security funding bill.
It was a stunning turnaround in just nine weeks, a particular victory for Johnson and appropriators.
Somehow, despite the bitterly toxic environment on Capitol Hill and across official Washington, Johnson and Jeffries empowered appropriators to cut a spending deal that left aside the culture war issues that define both parties. It was in both Johnson and Jeffries’ interest to do so and bolstered their positions internally.
Shortly after he took the speakership, Johnson made a return to “regular order” and the end of omnibus legislating his chief political goal. Hardline GOP conservatives were sick of the massive 2,000 to 3,000-page packages negotiated in secret and dumped on them with a shutdown looming. For their part, appropriators needed to get away from CRs or their committee would no longer matter. And pretty much everyone wanted earmark money to spread back home.
Jeffries and House Democrats won here too. CRs give the Trump administration too much leeway in doling out federal dollars. From Democrats’ point of view, GOP appropriators came their way on nearly every issue, from topline spending numbers to eschewing “poison pill” policy riders.
“This is the most significant progress towards restoring regular order in this institution in many years,” Johnson told reporters following a huge bipartisan vote for the $1.2 trillion Defense-Labor-HHS-THUD package.
House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Johnson’s support was critical for getting the FY2026 bills done at all.
“This speaker is the reason that these 12 bills happened,” Cole declared.
A long road. We’ll note that Johnson and Cole pushed huge spending cuts early in 2025 when DOGE was running Washington. It’s one of the many reasons why the whole appropriations process has dragged out until late January.
OMB Director Russ Vought called for more than $100 billion in discretionary cuts on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars cut from Medicaid and other mandatory programs in the One Big Beautiful. House GOP appropriators drafted partisan spending bills at the Vought-proposed level knowing Democrats and the Senate would never go along with it.
Hill Republicans also did nothing when President Donald Trump unilaterally shut down USAID and tried to dismantle the Education Department, all while laying off tens of thousands of federal employees.
But the record-setting 43-day government shutdown — which Democrats triggered in an epic clash over Obamacare subsidies — was a watershed moment for House and Senate appropriators.
With House and Senate leaders’ tacit approval, the Four Corners on the Appropriations panels — Cole, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — began to quietly hash out spending deals. It was clear that the Vought-pushed spending level wasn’t going to work, and they drafted bipartisan bills accordingly.
Appropriators and party leaders desperately wanted to avoid another CR. It’s not hyperbole to say that this was a critical moment for the 160-year old House Appropriations Committee.
“We got the bills done, and we came out very well, you know, and that should be proof enough that we need to make the process work,” DeLauro said in an interview.
“But first and foremost, it is reaffirming the power of the purse, as the Constitution said, resides in the Congress, and there we are not just going to let Russ Vought, an unelected bureaucrat … go run roughshod over the appropriations process.”
