I'm not even sure that the US is actually in the race to the moon anymore. Our modern "moon program" was always a pork project designed to keep former shuttle supply chains busy and spread the government funding around. It's such a convoluted mess that depends on a bunch of complicated systems that all must magically work together to get Americans down to the moon and back. And there simply isn't any interest or public will for it. Heck, people are talking about the potential of a civil war here. Everything has been cut after Artemis III, and Artemis III is complete fantasy land at this point unless StarShip gets sorted out, which is a question.