President signs an executive order for an IndyCar street race around the National Mall.

The President signed an executive order on Friday afternoon, in the Oval Office, with Roger Penske standing next to him, directing the United States Department of the Interior and the Department of Transportation to design a route through Washington, D.C. for an IndyCar street race in August.

Hon. An IndyCar street race. Through Washington, D.C. On the National Mall. The thing the cherry trees are on. The thing the fourth-grade field trips are on. The thing the Lincoln Memorial is on. Through it.

The order calls the race the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. The order says the race will run August 21 through 23, 2026. The order says the Secretaries of the Interior and Transportation have fourteen days to designate a route “suitable for conducting an INDYCAR street race.” Fourteen days. That is the length of one federal procurement cycle for a sandwich. The Secretaries are being asked, in fourteen days, to plan a closed-circuit street race past every monument in the federal city.

You ever notice how every time the country gets a Big Showy Idea on a Friday afternoon, the agencies that have to actually make it work are always given a deadline that’s shorter than the time it would take an actual planner to write the executive summary of why it can’t be done. The Secretaries of Interior and Transportation, as of Friday at five, have two weeks to figure out where the concrete barriers go and how the Park Service is going to handle a quarter million spectators in the same week as the federal Hajj of summer field trips.

I have run a casino floor. I have run a parking lot for a Garth Brooks concert. Two different events. I have also run a private parking lot for a closed-circuit go-kart event, on a county fairground, with twelve cars and three thousand spectators. I know what those events involve. The closed circuit closed seven streets. The parking exclusion zone took six months to plan. The county fairground had a fence around it. The Lincoln Memorial does not have a fence around it. The Lincoln Memorial has Mr. Lincoln on it.

You can have an IndyCar race in DC. The cars are cool. The drivers are brave. The crews are the actual best in the world at what they do. I have nothing against IndyCar. I have zero against IndyCar. I have something against the way this is being done, which is Friday afternoon executive order, fourteen days, no funding mechanism in the order, no environmental review, no public hearings, no consultation with the District government, and Roger Penske already standing next to the desk like the deal had been signed before the order was signed.

Senator Schumer, the order’s text claimed, was making it very difficult. The Senator’s response was that he was not at the Oval Office signing. That is a different definition of difficult than the order had in mind.

That ought to concern you.