“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” —Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), American theologian and political ethicist, in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944).
And I don’t get pissed without explaining why.
Yesterday—Sunday, August 23—Gary and I had planned to visit DC, so that we could attend service at the Washington National Cathedral. Gary’s never been there, but I’ve been there often in years past.
Each time I return, the Washington National Cathedral rises in all its Gothic grandeur—massive towers, flying buttresses, pointed arches, and pale stone reaching heavenward as if gravity were merely a suggestion. Yet for all its majesty, it never feels strange or forbidding. It feels familiar, almost intimate, like coming home.
Once inside, we’d take our seats beneath soaring columns that rise into ribbed vaults seemingly without end, while banners hang overhead and stained glass scatters jeweled light across the stone. Then the organ would sound, the congregation would rise, and our voices would climb together into those vast arches. For this hour, the great Cathedral would be not just a house of God for all people. It would be home for all people, including me and Gary.
And this wouldn’t have been just any Sunday. It was the Sunday when the Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas, Canon Theologian at Washington National Cathedral, would climb into the Canterbury Pulpit—the very reason we had planned this trip. She does not merely deliver a sermon; she lives it—voice rising, hands reaching, intellect and righteous fire filling every corner of that enormous nave. She moves us. She stirs us. We were counting on being in her presence, knowing that she would make the Gospel feel urgent, dangerous, and alive.
But we didn’t get to go.
Not because we changed our minds. Not because our bodies surprised us with illness. Not because the weather pulled a fast one.
Gary discovered while browsing the morning news that a Freedom 250 Grand Prix would effectively commandeer downtown Washington that same weekend. The 1.7-mile race course would close Pennsylvania, Constitution, and Independence Avenues, along with 3rd, 7th, and 9th Streets, while a Level 1 security designation—the highest short of a presidential inauguration—would bring still more restrictions. City officials were already warning drivers to avoid the downtown grid altogether; access to museums and monuments was limited.
Gary and I were shocked by the news. Truthfully, neither of us had even heard of a Freedom 250 Grand Prix. Had it gone under the radar of journalists and pundits, too? Apparently not.
What I found was blistering. Critics saw the Grand Prix as a taxpayer-assisted Trump vanity project wrapped in red, white, and blue—a private motorsports spectacle that closed or restricted large portions of the National Mall, snarled traffic, hurt some nearby businesses, restricted access to museums and monuments, and even halted flights at Reagan National Airport for three hours. Preservationists worried that cars racing past at nearly 200 miles per hour could damage nearby artworks and historic murals, while corporate sponsors, administration officials, and guests paying $5,000 for an “exclusive race weekend experience” gathered in privileged comfort.
The Freedom 250 was hardly a celebration of America. It was a roughly $35 million spectacle, financed largely by Penske Corporation—the company that owns IndyCar—and corporate sponsors but still assisted by taxpayers through publicly funded security and other governmental support.
So how did this travesty come to be? Let me tell you. Hopefully, you’ll be pissed off, too, by such outlandish political shenanigans at the highest levels of our government.
Originally, the organizers wanted the race to circle the Capitol. That route needed congressional authorization—not just to use Capitol grounds, but to get around a long-standing ban on commercial advertising there. Penske Corporation president Bud Denker spent six months and held more than 100 meetings on Capitol Hill chasing that approval. Congress never gave it to him.
That should have ended the matter.
It didn’t.
At Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s urging, the organizers measured roads farther from the Capitol. They redrew the course a few blocks west—through and alongside the National Mall, past the National Gallery of Art and several Smithsonian museums, stopping just short of the Capitol complex. A few strokes on a map, and the race slid out of the jurisdiction that required Congress and into territory executive agencies already controlled.
According to Denker, within twenty-four hours of proposing that new route, he had a presidential executive order in his inbox to review.
Read that again. Within twenty-four hours, the president of a private corporation had a proposed executive order waiting for review.
Trump signed it January 30. Executive Order 14381 gave Interior and Transportation fourteen days to designate a route and orders to grant every permit “as expeditiously as possible.” It let the Interior Department wave the race through as a National Mall “special event” and freed Transportation to fund it. The Park Service did the rest, closing off whatever parkland the route required.
Voilà.
Trump did not overrule Congress. He did not persuade Congress. He made Congress unnecessary. A race that couldn’t win approval through the front door got moved a few blocks, handed to agencies the president controls, and turned by executive order into a fait accompli.
If that isn’t political sleight of hand, I don’t know what is.
So: doubly pissed. Pissed because this spectacle cost Gary and me our Sunday at the Cathedral. Pissed again because, when Congress would not say yes, Trump just redrew the map and circumvented congressional approval.
The first took a Sunday from the two of us. The second diminished a democratic safeguard for all of us.
We’ll get our Sunday back. Yesterday, as we watched the livestream, the Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas climbed into that pulpit and stressed the urgency of doing good, of being surrounded by good, and of being held accountable to the good. She will climb into it again, and Gary and I will be there in person.
The democratic safeguard, however, won’t recover so easily. It regains its force only if enough of us insist that power still answers to the people—and that when power redraws the map, we draw the line right back.
The Wired Researcher 