IndyCar in DC; Fresh Tariffs on Canadian Goods; National Debt Hits $40 Trillion

Massive crowds are expected for Washington, D.C.'s first-ever IndyCar Grand Prix. The high-speed race around the National Mall is part of the Trump administration's celebrations for the country's 250th birthday. I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News. Ready or not. Some very fast cars are coming to Washington this weekend. We'll tell you about the politics behind the event, as well as the latest on the legal fight around President Trump's new White House ballroom. Plus, Canada suspends trade talks with the U.S., which means lots of fresh tariffs. And the U.S. national debt has hit $40 trillion. That's a lot of zeros. We'll look at how we got here. Stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend. Buckle up, D.C., because it's going to get loud and fast this weekend. Vroom! The IndyCar race is coming to the nation's capital. Viewers set to watch cars rocketing around the National Mall at speeds of nearly 200 miles per hour. NPR's Deepa Shivaram joins us. Thanks so much for being with us. Hi. Good morning, Scott. D.C.'s not a car race capital. How did the race come about? Yeah, this has been in the works since last year, and it didn't even involve the White House at first. It was just a passion project idea from Bud Denker, who's the president of the Penske Corporation. That's the organization that's putting on the race and funding most of it. Denker thought about having D.C. host a race to mark the country's 250th, like you were saying. So he came to D.C. for two days last year just to walk the city and see if it was possible to make a racetrack that was wide enough and with good enough roads. So I thought I would. I started the monuments, Jefferson Monument down that way, Washington Monument. The roads were too narrow. They weren't in great shape. I made my way to the Capitol. I mean, literally around the Capitol, a constitution down Independence First Street, which is in front of the Supreme Court. And I found this perfect racetrack. But that's not the route. What changed? Well, politics got in the way. The original racetrack that Denker outlined was actually on congressional land and needed approval from Congress. But the votes weren't. So Denker was about to give up. But then he phoned in Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who then looped in President Trump. So then Denker went about finding a new racetrack near the National Mall. And within days, he says, Trump signed an executive order approving it. And then my head was blowing up thinking, oh, my God, I got I got less than seven months to do this. And that all happened back in January. And since then, Denker has moved to D.C. to help organize the race. Roads along the track had to be set up. Giant walls were installed. The area has been blocked off for weeks, and it's been causing a lot of traffic disruption in the city. President Trump gave the event the green light, if you please. How else will he be involved? Well, he did give it the green light in a way. And he'll also be waving the green flag for the race on Sunday. Before the race begins, he'll also take a lap of the track in his own car. Besides that, the race has been organized and funded primarily from the Penske Corporation, though the actual price tag of the event hasn't been disclosed, Scott. And the government. The government is paying some costs, like for security through Secret Service, the Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Park Police. But broadly, you know, this ties into one of many grand events Trump has touted this year to celebrate America's 250th birthday. For example, the White House hosted for the first time a UFC fight on the South Lawn. There was a big fireworks show on July 4th. Things like that. And while you're here, the Supreme Court weighed in yesterday on President Trump's ballroom construction. What happened? Yeah. So the court ruled that construction. The ballroom could continue for now. Trump knocked down the east wing of the White House last October to begin building this new ballroom, which he's also been calling a military complex. And this all started, this lawsuit, when the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is a nonprofit, sued the administration and said Trump needed approval from Congress to build a ballroom, which I will point out is pretty unpopular among voters. I was with Trump yesterday when he was in South Carolina for a campaign rally. He thanked the Supreme Court for their decision and said it put him in a good mood. NPR's Deepa Shivaram, always good to speak with you. Thanks very much. You as well. Thanks. After weeks of negotiating, trade talks between Canada and the U.S. broke down last night, which means that new 50 percent tariffs went into effect at midnight. The tariffs target a host of Canadian imports, from building materials to hockey sticks. NPR's Ron Anderson. Melvin joins us now. Good to be with you, Scott. Of course, Canada's a top U.S. trading partner. Why did these talks collapse? Talks broke down after Trump on Tuesday had said a deal had been struck. But both sides accused the other of including new demands in the late stages, and both sides have sought to have previous tariffs rolled back as part of this deal. Now, a lot of this has to do with the auto industry, which produces cars on both sides of the border and has done so for generations. Now, these new tariffs kicked in as of. One minute after midnight this morning. We've seen this kind of brinksmanship before, and sometimes tariffs get rolled back. But Canada is one of our top trading partners. It's been a longtime ally. Note that they use dollars of their own. We use dollars of our own. It almost seems as though the stalemate with Iran has created a moment for the tariff wars to begin again. President Trump, by the way, a 60-day memorandum of understanding expired on Monday. The president says he'll impose, quote, an economic D-Day on Iran. What does he think this kind of pressure campaign might achieve? We can't be sure what President Trump really thinks, let alone why. But he surely should know by now how economic sanctions have failed to force Iran to do what the U.S. wanted. The chances of economic sanctions forcing their hand now look slim, even to Trump. But the war has reached a stalemate with no ceasefire in place, relatively little fire being exchanged, for the moment. Trump might well prefer talking tough about a D-Day economically, as opposed to another round of bombing threats, especially because we're seeing the limits of bombing right now. Air power alone may not finish the job. Of course, there are key economic concerns that American voters bring to the conversation, the cost of gas and of goods and food, the cost of borrowing. And that brings us to note another development, the $40 trillion debt of the United States of America. How big a political issue is this? It's been an issue back to the earliest days of the Republic. And it was a big issue to many Republicans after the Depression and World War II in Vietnam had pushed the debt out to, are you ready, $1 trillion. President Ronald Reagan treated that like the crack of doom back in 1980. But it's only gotten worse since then and very much worse lately. And now we're at $40 trillion and everyone blames someone else. I remember a lot of talk of the 1980s. About balancing the federal budget and it was important to bring the debt down. How has it happened that the Congress and whoever is in office in the White House, $40 trillion debt today is more palatable somehow than the $5.5 trillion debt back then? There was a window back 25 years ago when the debt was still in single-digit trillions and a decade of growth was swelling tax revenues after the 1990s. And the federal budget was actually balanced. It was balanced on paper just after the year 2000 with the chance to pay down the debt thereafter. Possibly wiping it out entirely. But right after that, Congress gave President George W. Bush a huge tax cut. And then the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001 happened. And then a decade of the war on terror. And the annual deficit spiked again. And the national debt became the national balloon as it got bigger and bigger and bigger year after year. Finally, stars and stripes. News outlet supposed to be independent. And yet the Pentagon has fired the publisher who was set to retire the editor-in-chief and a Middle East correspondent. What do we know? Well, going back to the Bill Malden cartoons that captured so much of the life of the Army in World War II, those cartoons began in the stars and stripes. And this publication has been part of the life of the American military, not part of the Pentagon's power structure. If you change that relationship, you change the experience of being in the American military. Ron Elvin, thanks so much. Thank you, Scott. America's national debt hit $40 trillion this week, and it's continuing to grow. This means that the U.S. national debt has doubled in just under a decade. We're joined now by NPR's congressional reporter, Eric McDaniel. Happy to be here. What does this milestone mean? I mean, is $40 trillion? More scary, really, than $39 trillion? I mean, I think the important thing to know is that the national debt right now is bigger than the size of the U.S. economy. As you know, debt is not inherently a bad thing, right? Imagine you borrow money to invest in a college education or start a business. But the economists I talked to for this story pointed out a few things beyond that top-line number. One, the rate at which the U.S. economy is growing compared to the rate the debt is growing is not good. The debt is growing faster. The government projects the debt will grow twice. as fast as the U.S. economy over the next 10 years to the government. is using debt to pay for current regular spending, not big generational projects. Here's labor economist Catherine Ann Edwards. We are not building the federal highway system. We are not tackling climate change. We are not making generational investments in children. And there's also kind of a compounding problem, right? The more debt you have, the higher the overall interest rates are, the more money that goes to servicing that debt or paying that interest. Right now, it's about a fifth of all U.S. tax revenue each year. At the turn of the century, 2000, the United States was on track to pay off the national debt. Twenty-six years later, things are very different. How did that happen? Here's a real shocking answer. They spent more money. That's mostly automatic increases, like paying more for Social Security as folks get older. Also, big ticket items. We bought generationally long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and stimulus packages to prop up the economy after the 2008 financial crisis and during the coronavirus pandemic. Then Congress decided to take in the debt. Less money. Republicans repeatedly passed huge tax cuts, and those tax cuts ultimately didn't grow the economy enough to offset the lower share of income that the government was taking in. Jessica Riedel, a conservative economist at Brookings, kept it simple when explaining it. It's just been a yearly drumbeat of spending increases and tax cuts. Eric, what are some of the proposed solutions? Well, views differ. Republicans are in favor of continuing to cut spending on government programs, but it's hard to make the math. With just spending cuts, right? The president's one big, beautiful bill cut government tax revenue by $4.5 trillion over 10 years, but only cut spending by about a trillion over that time, meaning overall it adds to the debt rather than reducing it. Democrats want to invest more in social programs like child care, which they think will grow the tax base. Here's Edwards again. If you could tell someone, I have a magic wand to get parents 10% higher income, people would be desperate for it. But of course, we don't need a magic wand. We just need the university. She also says we have to raise taxes. Riedel agrees that taxes have to rise, but insists there need to be spending cuts, too. She says there aren't painless solutions. Everyone's ox is going to get gored, as she put it to me. You really can't fix the deficit without addressing Social Security and Medicare. And I don't have to tell you, those are the third rails in American politics, programs that are as expensive as they are popular. I used to hear about lawmakers who were deficit hawks. Do they exist anymore in Congress? Look, for my money, I think that was already kind of overplayed as a force. What we've seen in the last 25 years when we talk about fiscally-minded Republicans is folks who are hawkish on tax rates and social spending. The new Senate Budget Committee chairman, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, says he'll be vocal about wanting things to be paid for, though he supported the president's one big beautiful bill last year that dramatically increases the debt. After telling NPR it was immoral and grotesque, those are quotes, he said the president promised future spending cuts to win over his vote. But we'll see how Johnson handles a looming fight, nearly $100 billion in proposed spending, largely on the military, in a reconciliation package this fall, none of which is paid for. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant told CNBC that the White House will come up with a plan on the debt, but there's just no simple way to make up a $2 trillion hole in the annual budget. That's more or less the amount Congress appropriates annually for the whole kit and caboodle of typical federal spending. Well, thanks very much, NPR's Eric McDaniel. I love to bring the joy. Thanks, Scott. That's up first for Saturday, August 22nd, 2026. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Seidman. Dave Misich produced this podcast with help from Danica Pineda and Ryan Bank. Our editor is Dee Parvez, with support from Melissa Gray, Rebecca Metzler, Jason Breslow, and Anna Yukoninoff. Our director is Andy Craig, and our technical director is David Greenberg. Our engineering team includes Zoe Vangenhoven, Jay Ciz, and Valentina Rodriguez-Sanchez. Our senior supervising editor is Shannon Rhodes. Our executive producer is Evie Stone, and our deputy managing editor is Catherine Laidlaw. Tomorrow on the Sunday Story, we hear from reporter Lauren Sommer about the Pacific Island ecosystem called Palmyra Atoll. It's part of four protected U.S. marine monuments forming the country's largest marine monument. The Pacific Island is the world's largest environmental conservation area, and no humans live there full-time. It's rare for journalists to get access to the area, so you're not going to want to miss this reporting. I wouldn't miss it for anything, so thanks for listening and for supporting your local NPR station. And if you need to find yours, zoom like an Indy racer and go to stations.npr.org. Vroom, vroom, vroom. Oh, that gets my blood going. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.