A federal judge on Monday barred the Trump administration from cutting any more trees at East Potomac Park without first obtaining a court order, delivering a significant win to preservation advocates and local golfers challenging President Donald Trump’s plan to remake the public golf course and sharply rebuking the administration’s account of why the trees were removed.
In a blistering 70-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes found that recent tree-clearing was undertaken to advance Trump’s broader plan to replace the historic public course with a Tom Fazio-designed championship layout. Reyes called the administration’s stated rationale — that the cutting was a separate effort to carry out a 2019 preservation report — “pretextual.”
Reyes opened her opinion by describing the extraordinary clash between Trump’s public statements about his plans for the course and the government’s contrary position in court, writing: “Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President.”
In granting the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, Reyes also ordered the administration to give the court and plaintiffs at least 10 business days’ notice before closing any part of the course or making irreversible changes to the park, including its landforms, vegetation, course design, pathways or structures.
The requirement comes after Trump publicly announced that East Potomac would close Nov. 15 for roughly 15 months, although senior Park Service officials testified last week that they had not been told of any such closure.
Trump responded late Monday, saying Interior would “immediately appeal” Reyes’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and reiterating that the course will close on Nov. 15. He called the notice requirements “time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional,” arguing that the redevelopment must begin immediately.
“The judge has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project,” he wrote on Truth Social.
The judge’s order requires the government to disclose the precise nature and timing of any planned work, the officials who authorized it and will carry it out, its anticipated effect on the park and whether it is connected to Trump’s plan to remake East Potomac into a championship course capable of hosting major tournaments — a plan Justice Department lawyers have maintained has still not been finalized. The judge also ordered officials to inform the court “without delay” if any entity or individual seeks to make changes at East Potomac.
An Interior Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is a big win that will rightly protect East Potomac Park from further irreparable harm,” Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We are grateful the court intervened to stop the Trump-Vance administration’s greed and lawlessness while the case continues.”
The dispute escalated this month after National Park Service crews cut down more than 400 trees at East Potomac over the Oct. 10 holiday weekend. Reyes initially halted further cutting for 24 hours, then extended the restriction through Oct. 26.
The administration has characterized the cutting as a separate effort to carry out recommendations in a 2019 report seeking to restore the course’s historic links-style landscape, rather than the opening phase of Trump’s larger overhaul.
In her ruling, Reyes concluded that the government likely violated the National Environmental Policy Act by improperly breaking the broader project into smaller pieces, avoiding a full review of its cumulative environmental effects.
At an hours-long hearing last Monday, Reyes said there was “no universe” in which the timing of the tree removal, Trump’s public announcements and the emerging redesign were merely coincidental.Reyes wrote in her ruling that the government “appears to have set the timing of the tree removal and late notice to impede Plaintiffs’ ability to seek Court intervention.”
The hearing also exposed a disconnect between the administration’s public messaging and its position in court. Trump announced the day before that Interior and Fazio, the golf architect, had “developed a plan” for a championship course, said the existing facility would close Nov. 15 and promised the new course would open roughly 15 months later. The rendering Trump shared would replace East Potomac’s 36 existing holes with a single 18-hole championship course and among other things appears to eliminate Ohio Drive, the loop road around the peninsula that’s popular with cyclists and runners.
Yet Gregory Wischer, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s deputy chief of staff, testified that he learned of the Nov. 15 closure date from Trump’s social media post and had first seen the new Fazio design only days earlier. Justice Department lawyers maintained there was no final plan. Reyes found Wischer’s testimony not credible, citing his role in a June tour of the course with Trump, Burgum and Fazio, during which he carried concepts for the project.
That conflict appeared to deepen Reyes’s frustration with the government. “So who do I believe?” she asked last week after a government lawyer said there was no plan to close the course Nov. 15. “Do I believe the president of the United States or do I believe you?”
In her ruling, Reyes wrote: “DOJ cannot acknowledge the President’s account without dropping a key defense to Plaintiffs’ suit, so it has not.”
Reyes directed the Interior Department to explain by Wednesday why it — including relevant Justice Department attorneys and staff — should not be ordered to preserve information related to the existence of the Trump’s plan, the timing of the tree removal and the government’s notice to the court and plaintiffs.
Last Monday’s hearing came after a week of unusually personal conflict between Reyes and the Justice Department. Government lawyers sought her recusal, accusing her of “open hostility” and bias. Reyes rejected the request.
Trump, meanwhile, has used social media both to press the project and to assail the judge. In addition to announcing the planned closure and Fazio redesign, he wrote last Monday that work would begin “IMMEDIATELY!” and called Reyes a “crazed lunatic” who “may be insane.”
Elizabeth Kiker, executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, said she welcomed the ruling. WABA filed an amicus brief in the case last week. “What a day of success and hope for an occasionally beaten down, but ultimately unbowed, Washington, D.C. community,” she said in a statement.