WASHINGTON (AP) — The streets of the nation's capital will host an IndyCar race this summer as part of celebrations marking America's 250th birthday, President Donald Trump announced Friday, relishing the prospect of vehicles roaring past the White House at speeds approaching 200 mph.
Trump signed an executive order establishing the race on Aug. 23 alongside Roger Penske, owner of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, IndyCar and teams in multiple racing series including NASCAR.
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President Donald Trump speaks to Roger Penske, second left. as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Roger Penske, second left, speaks before President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
FILE - Drivers participate in the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, May 25, 2025. (AP Photo/AJ Mast, File)
President Donald Trump holds an executive order he signed in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“It's going to be so exciting," Trump said. "I love the racing. I don't have a lot of time to watch it, but I love the racing.”
Penske suggested there was “no better way for us to bring automotive and speed into the D.C. area, and to be able to have the opportunity to compete here with our IndyCars."
A news release from IndyCar said the route would include the National Mall, and the executive order gives the Departments of Transportation and the Interior two weeks to designate a route through Washington “that is suitable for conducting an INDYCAR street race and that will showcase the majesty of our capital city in celebration of the 250th anniversary of America’s independence.”
The order also directs city and other officials to work closely with race organizers.
The event continues Trump’s embrace of sports during his second term: Most of his domestic travel has been built around attending major games and events — including the recent NCAA football national championship in Miami Gardens, Florida.
The president has also been personally involved in promoting a UFC fight to help mark America’s 250th anniversary which he has said is set for June 14 on the White House grounds — a date that happens to be his 80th birthday.
But Trump isn't planning to attend the upcoming Super Bowl on Feb. 8 between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots in Santa Clara, California, suggesting it's too far to travel.
In IndyCar's case, the race is set to come to him.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who also attended Friday's signing ceremony in the Oval Office, gushed: "To think, 190 miles an hour down Pennsylvania Avenue. This is going to be wild.”
Trump said he’d urged organizers to pick the best race route through Washington’s streets — even if they were more complicated logistically.
“I said, pick the best site. It’s very important,” the president said. “Even if it’s more difficult to get, to get approved, pick the absolute best site.”
Organizers said they'd long lobbied members of Congress to authorize a road race in Washington, but had been previously unsuccessful. Duffy asked when the last road race in the capital occurred and was told it was in 1801 and involved horses during the administration of President Thomas Jefferson — prompting Trump to reply, “That's something.”
“Now we're going to do a real race,” said Duffy, who said the event would be free for the public, declaring: “Freedom, America. Speed. And road racing. It doesn’t get more American than that.”
President Donald Trump speaks to Roger Penske, second left. as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Roger Penske, second left, speaks before President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
FILE - Drivers participate in the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, May 25, 2025. (AP Photo/AJ Mast, File)
President Donald Trump holds an executive order he signed in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's nomination of Kevin Warsh to chair the Federal Reserve could bring about sweeping changes at a central bank that dominates the global economy and markets like no other.
Warsh, if approved by the Senate, will be under close scrutiny from financial markets and Congress given his appointment by a president who has loudly demanded much lower rates than many economists think are justified by economic conditions. Whether he can maintain the Fed's long time independence from day-to-day politics while also placating Trump will be a tremendous challenge.
Still, former associates and friends of Warsh say that he has the intellectual heft and people skills to potentially pull it off. His family also has connections to Trump that could reduce the pressure from the White House.
Warsh has “a judicious temperament and both the intellectual understanding but also the hopefully diplomatic talents to navigate what is a challenging position at this point,” said Raghuram Rajan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and formerly head of India's central bank.
Warsh would replace current chair Jerome Powell when his term expires in May. Trump chose Powell to lead the Fed in 2017 but this year has relentlessly assailed him for not cutting interest rates quickly enough.
"I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best,” Trump posted on social media Friday. “On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’ and he will never let you down.”
Trump said later Friday in the Oval Office that he didn't ask Warsh to commit to cutting rates, calling such a question “inappropriate" and adding, “I want to keep it nice and pure.”
But Trump added, “But he certainly wants to cut rates.”
The appointment, which requires Senate confirmation, amounts to a return trip for Warsh, 55, who was a member of the Fed's board from 2006 to 2011. He was the youngest governor in history when he was appointed at age 35. He is currently a fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
In some ways, Warsh is an unlikely choice for the Republican president because he has long supported higher interest rates to control inflation. Trump, by contrast, has said the Fed’s key rate should be as low as 1%, a level few economists endorse, and far below its current level of about 3.6%.
During his time as governor, Warsh objected to some of the low-interest rate policies that the Fed pursued during and after the Great Recession of 2008-09. He also often expressed concern at that time that inflation would soon accelerate, even though it remained at rock-bottom levels for many years after that recession ended.
More recently, however, in speeches and opinion columns, Warsh has voiced support for lower rates, seemingly coming in line with Trump's point of view.
Financial markets reacted in ways that suggest investors expect Warsh could keep rates a bit higher over time. The dollar and yields on long-term U.S. Treasurys ticked higher. U.S. stocks fell about 0.5%. The biggest moves were in the volatile metals markets, where gold dropped more than 5% and silver sank more than 13%.
In Congress, Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, reiterated in a social media post that he will oppose Warsh's nomination until a Justice Department investigation into Powell is resolved.
Tillis is on the Senate committee that will consider Warsh's nomination.
He added that Warsh is a “qualified nominee,” but stressed that “protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve from political interference or legal intimidation is non-negotiable.”
Tillis’s opposition could complicate the confirmation process. Asked late Thursday whether Warsh could be confirmed without Tillis’s support, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “probably not.”
Separately, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the highest-ranking Democrat on the committee, accused Warsh of reshaping his views to appease Trump ahead of his nomination.
“I don’t know how to interpret that, except to say, that’s exactly what a sock puppet does,” she said. “If Donald Trump says it, then Kevin Warsh echoes it, even though it contradicts everything he had done for years.”
Warsh has frequently criticized the Fed for its ownership of trillions of dollars in government and mortgage-backed securities, which it accumulated after the Great Recession and during the pandemic.
Warsh has charged that the massive bond-buying, which was intended to lower longer-term interest rates and boost the economy, enabled Congress to ramp up spending without concern for higher borrowing costs.
Reducing the Fed's $6.6 trillion balance sheet, however, will be a fraught exercise because banks have become accustomed to the large amounts of cash in the financial system that it provides.
Warsh has also said the Fed's economic models wrongly assume that rapid economic growth threatens to elevate inflation. Instead, “Inflation is caused when government spends too much and prints too much,” he wrote in a November column in The Wall Street Journal.
The announcement comes after an extended and unusually public search. The chair of the Federal Reserve is tasked with combating inflation in the United States while also supporting maximum employment. The Fed is also the nation’s top banking regulator.
The Fed’s rate decisions, over time, influence borrowing costs throughout the economy, including for mortgages, car loans and credit cards.
Trump has sought to exert more control over the Fed. In August he tried to fire Lisa Cook, one of seven governors on the Fed’s board, in an effort to secure a majority of the board. Cook, however, sued to keep her job, and the Supreme Court, in a hearing last week, appeared inclined to let her stay in her position while her suit is resolved.
Powell revealed this month that the Fed had been subpoenaed by the Justice Department about his congressional testimony on a $2.5 billion building renovation. Powell said the subpoenas were “pretexts” to force the Fed to cut rates.
Warsh has expressed support for the president's economic policies, despite a history as a more conventional, pro-free trade Republican.
In a January 2025 column in The Wall Street Journal, Warsh praised Trump's deregulatory policies and potential spending cuts, which he said would help bring down inflation. He has also suggested that artificial intelligence will boost productivity, making the economy more efficient while reducing inflation. Lower inflation would allow the Fed to lower rates.
In December, Trump wrote on social media of the need for lower borrowing costs and said, “Anyone who disagrees with me will never be the Fed chairman!”
If confirmed, Warsh would face challenges in pushing interest rates much lower. The chair is just one member of the Fed’s 19-person rate-setting committee, with 12 of those officials voting on each rate decision. The committee is already split between those worried about persistent inflation, who’d like to keep rates unchanged, and those who think that recent upticks in unemployment point to a stumbling economy that needs lower interest rates to bolster hiring.
Financial markets could also push back. If the Fed cuts its short-term rate too aggressively and is seen as doing so for political reasons, then Wall Street investors could sell Treasury bonds out of fear that inflation would rise. Such sales would push up longer-term interest rates, including mortgage rates, and backfire on Warsh.
Trump considered appointing Warsh as Fed chair during his first term, though ultimately he went with Powell. Warsh’s father-in-law is Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune and a longtime donor and confidant of Trump’s.
Follow the AP's coverage of the Federal Reserve System at https://apnews.com/hub/federal-reserve-system.
FILE - Kevin Warsh, speaking to the media about his report on transparency at the Bank of England, in London, Dec., 11, 2014. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool, File)
FILE - Kevin Warsh, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in a panel discussion on "Central Banking in an Age of Improvisation," Nov. 28, 2011 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
FILE - Kevin Warsh, speaking to the media about his report on transparency at the Bank of England, in London, Dec., 11, 2014. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool, File)
FILE - Kevin Warsh, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in a panel discussion on "Central Banking in an Age of Improvisation," Nov. 28, 2011 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
FILE - Kevin Warsh speaks to the media about his report on transparency at the Bank of England, in London, Dec., 11, 2014. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool, File)
President Donald Trump arrives for the premiere of first lady Melania Trump's movie "Melania" at The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
