Judge blocks Trump’s East Potomac golf course renovations : NPR

After weeks of tense hearings and late-night court filings, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from making any further alterations to East Potomac Park, the municipal D.C. golf course that the president wants to redevelop into a championship-level venue.

The long-simmering legal battle kicked into high gear in recent weeks, after the government cut down 430 trees on the golf course with less than a day’s notice. That prompted a pair of lengthy court hearings that at times turned heated, with government officials repeatedly insisting that the tree-clearing was unrelated to the renovations President Trump had touted on social media. They contradicted the president’s own social media posts from that very morning by saying there was no final plan for those renovations at all.

“Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting president,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote in her 70-page opinion. “And yet, here we are.”

Reyes extended what was initially a two-week halt to tree removal, ordering the government not to cut down “or substantially prune or otherwise damage or impair” any trees at East Potomac Park without a court order. She also ordered it to provide “no less than ten business days’ written advance notice” before closing or making any “irreversible modification” to any parts of the park while the legal battle plays out.

“By issuing this preliminary injunction, the Court does not end the round: it simply marks the ball until the parties can fully and fairly litigate this case,” Reyes wrote.

Monday’s ruling is a win for the D.C. Preservation League and a pair of local golfers who sued to prevent renovations earlier this year — and for the growing grassroots movement to protect the municipal course and the surrounding recreational area, which is beloved by runners, cyclists, birders and others.

“We are grateful the court intervened to stop the Trump-Vance administration’s greed and lawlessness while the case continues, and we are eager to argue the case in court,” said Skye Perryman, the president of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs.

In a Truth Social post late Monday, Trump said the Department of the Interior will appeal the ruling. NPR has reached out to the Department of Interior but did not hear back in time for publication.

Trump also doubled down on his earlier announcement that construction will begin on Nov. 15 and keep the park closed for 15 months, adding that the “judge has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project.”

“To have to give advanced notices to a judge who has no expertise in Golf, Architecture, Landscaping, Construction, or anything else having to do with building such a World Class Project, is not fair, appropriate, or Constitutional,” Trump wrote.

Reyes herself has said she is not interested in policing the federal government’s landscaping efforts.

That’s why, as she explained in Monday’s opinion, she repeatedly declined to intervene in the case — instead issuing repeated warnings against any unannounced major alterations — until “the Government did what it assured all it would not do.”

“The Court earlier stated, ‘I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees,'” Reyes concluded. “The Court still does not speak for the trees. It speaks only for the rule of law.”

The judge took aim at the government’s contradictions

Reyes’ strongly-worded 70-page opinion came exactly a week after a seven-hour hearing in which she clashed repeatedly with the government’s lawyers. She had already rejected the administration’s request to recuse herself from the case because of alleged bias.

Last week’s hearing featured sworn testimony from several officials from the Department of the Interior and National Park Service, to provide a fuller account of the origins and purpose of the controversial tree-clearing. But it teed up bigger questions about whether the administration had misled the court and the public over its intentions for the golf course.

“This started as a case about golf. That good walk spoiled. But it has become much more,” Reyes wrote on Monday. “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.”

Much of Reyes’ opinion examines the gap between what Trump has said publicly and what his administration has told the court.

The most notable: Trump posted online the morning of last week’s hearing that work would begin on the golf course “immediately.” But hours later, in the courtroom, administration officials said in sworn testimony that they were not aware of any final plan.

Weaving together timelines and testimonies, Reyes ultimately agreed with plaintiffs that there does seem to be a golf course renovation plan (they refer to it as the “Washington National Plan”) despite the administration’s repeated denials.

“To be sure, the Court cannot pinpoint the exact date at which the Plan became final,” Reyes wrote. “But it determines without hesitation that it occurred at some point well before October 15, 2026.”

She doesn’t accept the government’s explanation that it cleared hundreds of healthy, non-invasive trees on such short notice to enact vegetation recommendations from a 2019 National Park Service Report (whose other recommendations, including for the city’s other two municipal golf courses, went largely unaddressed in the last seven years). She called that justification “pretextual.”

She took particular aim at the credibility of one witness, Gregory Wischer — a deputy chief of staff at the Interior Department — who was photographed carrying rolled-up concept plans while accompanying Trump and golf course architect Tom Fazio on a tour of East Potomac in June.

“Yet Wischer maintains that he — as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the Interior — just spontaneously became interested in tree and vegetation management. In mid September. At the East Potomac Golf Course,” Reyes wrote.

Reyes said the government “has made no compelling factual rebuttal.” At one point, the administration accused the plaintiffs of conjecture “based on a handful of tweets.” Reyes shut that down in Monday’s opinion.

“The ‘handful of tweets’ are not complaints about the Red Sox’s latest blown lead in the ninth. They are statements from the President of the United States, and from the Secretary of the Interior, about actions within their purview,” she wrote. “And the posts say, in no uncertain terms, that a plan exists and that construction will start imminently — one even contains a final schematic of the Course’s redesign.”

What’s next for East Potomac? 

Trump said as recently as Monday night that he believes the renovations do not require approval. But, as Reyes pointed out in her opinion, administration officials acknowledged in a July hearing that major renovations would require federal environmental and historic preservation reviews.

Last week, however, administration lawyers presented an “alternative argument” that the renovations actually cannot be reviewed under the Administrative Procedure Act.

“It says, Emily Litella-style: ‘Never mind,'” Reyes wrote, referring to the perpetually about-facing Saturday Night Live character. “But parties cannot change course whenever and however the evidence suits them … And so the Court does not credit this new argument.”

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that the government is purposefully approaching the golf course renovations as smaller projects — like dumping debris from the White House East Wing demolition last year or cutting down hundreds of trees this month — to avoid federally required environmental reviews.

That argument seems to hold water with Reyes, who said, the Interior Department likely violated the National Environmental Protection Act “by impermissibly segmenting its review of the Plan’s environmental effects.”

Monday’s ruling — and the administration’s promised appeal — could slow that process even more. Trump said on social media that work “must begin, immediately, if it is to be completed in a timely and seasonal manner.”

But there are still many questions about the final product.

The rendering Trump shared earlier this month shows the park’s three courses of varying ability levels combined into one that overtakes the entire peninsula, seemingly removing the perimeter road that runners and bikers use every day and raising questions about whether the historically affordable golf course could soon be less accessible.

Trump said Monday the redeveloped course will be able to host events like the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup, but will also be “open to the Public, at a reduced rate for those living in Washington, D.C.”

The project is one of many ways he’s looking to make his mark on the nation’s capital, from building the White House ballroom to adding his name to the Kennedy Center to pushing through plans for a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery.