WASHINGTON – No additional trees can be removed for now from a public park and golf course that President Donald Trump has said he will close and convert into a “world championship” course, a federal judge ordered on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, temporarily barred the Interior Department from making major alterations at East Potomac Park and ordered the government to give her 10 days’ notice before closing the course or making any further modifications to the grounds.
“Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President. Not to believe him that a cabinet secretary has ‘developed’ a federal land project. Not to believe him that the secretary’s agency will destroy a historic golf course already on the land. Not to believe him that ‘Restoration work’ will begin ‘IMMEDIATELY!’ Not to believe him that the course ‘will be closed’ for over a year. Not to believe what the President has repeatedly told the American public,” Reyes wrote. “And yet, here we are. This started as a case about golf. That good walk spoiled. But it has become much more. It now forces the Court to reconcile assertions by President Donald J. Trump with the sworn testimony of multiple government employees and the argument of senior Department of Justice attorneys.”
The order marks the latest development in a months-long battle between Trump’s quest for another exclusive playground and D.C. residents who want to protect the affordable, historic course and its miles of public walking and cycling trails.
The administration was already under orders to halt redevelopment plans for the public site through Oct. 26 after hundreds of healthy, noninvasive trees were cut down without warning, infuriating the judge. Justice Department attorneys could not initially tell her why the trees were cut down so abruptly, but on Oct. 12 assured her that nothing more would happen and that Trump was only in the preliminary stages of planning his course.
Trump, however, announced on social media on Oct. 18 that things were finalized, saying the park would close by Nov. 15 and that renovations for his “world championship” course would last 15 months. He also boasted that he didn’t need the judge’s approval and that Interior Department officials had already started working with golf course architect Tom Fazio.
Trump also called the judge a “crazed lunatic” who might be “insane.”
In court on Oct. 19, however, Greg Wischer, deputy chief of staff for the Interior Department, said he did not meet with Fazio nor Meredith O’Rourke, a Trump fundraiser who has been soliciting changes to the park, to discuss Trump’s plans for a new course. Jessica Bowron, acting National Park Service director, testified she was unaware that Trump planned to close the course. As for the healthy trees felled against earlier orders, administration lawyers told Reyes the work was connected to an existing 2019 renovation plan.
Reyes remained unconvinced, saying it made no sense to suddenly need to remove the healthy trees if they had been untouched for over seven years.
“I mean, there is no universe in which all of this just coincidentally happened at the same time. There just isn’t,” she said.
The Trump administration claims that the lawsuit shouldn’t have been allowed to get this far. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward has insisted this is because no “final agency action” has been taken by the government and therefore, the court cannot yet step in. (Woodward also filed an unsuccessful motion to disqualify Reyes, accusing her of “unfairly” questioning administration attorneys’ intelligence, allowing her “disdain” for the administration to influence her decisions. The DOJ once tried to file a misconduct complaint against Reyes over the transgender military ban too, but that complaint failed.)
The lawsuit has fast become another avenue for Trump to attempt to expand his authority. In court this week, Woodward repeatedly objected when the judge tried to get insight into what higher-ranking officials like Interior Secretary Doug Burgum may know about Trump’s plans.
