A Grand Prix to the Bottom: Trump’s $183 Billion Attack on American Culture and Heritage

This weekend, President Donald Trump is turning the heart of our democracy into a taxpayer-funded racetrack. Through an executive order, the administration mandated the "Freedom 250 Grand Prix"—an IndyCar street circuit winding directly through the National Mall. We are being told this is a celebration of America. But earlier this year, IndyCar quietly launched and then hastily deleted a new piece of official merchandise: a gauche, blatantly racist T-shirt. This is exactly what the current administration is substituting for our national heritage.

Trump is perfectly willing to risk the destruction of the nation's most priceless cultural assets to create a public spectacle that honors him, and almost assuredly puts carloads more of our money in his pocket.

Let me be clear: Live athletic competition can be a great cultural unifier, and celebrating America should be a joyous occasion. But this race is a fabricated, exhaust-choked spectacle designed entirely to feed Trump's obsession with personal grandeur. And it’s the public who is paying for everything and likewise the liability falls right into the lap of the public. We are being forced to subsidize a 200-mile-per-hour vanity project with an estimated cultural liability of up to $183 billion.

When you map the racecourse, the sheer negligence becomes terrifying. The circuit wraps directly around the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Air and Space Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian. If a catastrophic, high-speed crash were to occur—scattering carbon-fiber shrapnel and burning ethanol fuel, or triggering a massive structural fire—the cultural devastation would be irreversible. The vibration of the race alone has already forced the National Gallery of Art to remove paintings from the wall. But not everything can be protected like that.

Replacing the pinnacle of global art, foundational Indigenous artifacts, and the physical documents of our democracy with the cheap, offensive aesthetics of a racist IndyCar T-shirt is the ultimate manifestation of Trump’s corrupt worldview.

By forcing this race onto the Mall, the administration is playing Russian roulette with irreplaceable artifacts of American art and history. They are risking the original Declaration of Independence and the Constitution at the National Archives. They are endangering Leonardo da Vinci’s "Ginevra de' Benci"—the only da Vinci painting on public view in the Americas. They are threatening the 1903 Wright Flyer and the Apollo 11 Command Module.

And there is incredible risk of damage to the over 2,500 square feet of priceless, New Deal-era buon fresco murals physically bound into the walls of the Wilbur J. Cohen building, which could be obliterated by structural shockwaves or water damage from emergency fire suppression.

Mary Okin, assistant director of the Living New Deal, told WTOP: “Given how important these artworks are, there should be all kinds of protections taken, and also a case made that this race should not happen here. I don’t think a race like this would ever happen under other administrations, because it’s just foolish and reckless.”

Replacing the pinnacle of global art, foundational Indigenous artifacts, and the physical documents of our democracy with the cheap, offensive aesthetics of a racist IndyCar T-shirt is the ultimate manifestation of Trump’s corrupt worldview. Public goods hold no value to this administration unless they can be leveraged for a fleeting television broadcast.

We cannot allow an administration that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing to destroy the American legacy for a weekend of noise.