A federal judge on Monday ripped the Trump administration for “inexcusable” gamesmanship after it removed hundreds of trees from a public golf course that the president said he wants to turn into “one of the greatest golf courses anywhere in the world” — a renovation plan being challenged in court.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said lawyers for the government had assured her the administration would give her ample warning if it planned any “irreversible” actions at East Potomac Golf Links, only to chop down over 400 trees on the course over the weekend without proper notice.
“I’m furious,” Reyes told attorneys from the Justice Department.
“I was hearing from everyone on plaintiffs’ side this was going to happen. I said repeatedly, ‘No, I trust the government.’ I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done,” the judge said. She called the government’s actions “inexcusable.”
“What has happened has cost the government all of its credibility,” Reyes added.
An attorney for the government, Marissa Piropato, said it gave notice in a court filing shortly before 5 p.m. on Friday, the beginning of the three-day holiday weekend. The work began the next morning, with 430 trees being removed.
Piropato told the judge “we did our best” to notify the court and the plaintiff in the case, the DC Preservation League.
“You did not do your best. You did your absolute worst,” the judge snapped.
The judge issued an order early Monday temporarily barring any other trees from being removed until at least Tuesday, and called an emergency hearing with just hours’ notice, despite it being a federal court holiday.
Reyes had previously made clear she did not want to issue a restraining order in the case — “I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees. I am a judge,” she proclaimed at a hearing last month — but said the government’s actions had left her no choice.
She called in two officials from the National Park Service to testify virtually about the speed of the government’s actions. Both said the plan came together in the last week, and one, Deputy Director for Operations Frank Lands, said he’d been directed to begin executing it by Greg Wischer, deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
“Yes, a week is fast,” Lands said. “And I’m proud of the fact that we were able to move so quickly.”
Reyes ordered Wischer to testify at the hearing, but attorneys said they were unable to immediately find him. The judge ordered him to appear Tuesday and kept the restraining order in place until then.
The other official who testified, Superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks Kevin Griess, said workers had identified about 300 more trees that still need to be cut down.
The judge said at the end of the hearing that she felt she’d been lied to by the government.
She noted that the officials said the plan had essentially been greenlighted on Oct. 5, and that the NPS comptroller filed a sworn document in court the next day saying the agency has “no intent to commence significant rehabilitation work until all applicable compliance requirements have been satisfied.”
The plaintiffs in the case filed suit earlier this year, following reports President Donald Trump planned to transform the 100-year-old greens into a championship-style course.
The plaintiffs said they were concerned the administration would begin renovations without following proper procedures, citing in part the administration’s abrupt razing of the White House’s East Wing last year.
Debris from that demolition was later dumped on the course and used as landfill.
Trump confirmed his plans for the site in a post on Truth Social in June, calling the current course “dilapidated, worn out, and very dangerous and outdated.”
He said that “we have determined that this location can bring tremendous success and prestige back to Washington, D.C.,” and that work “on the new Course, which will go quickly, will begin on September 1st.”
At the time, Reyes did not sign a restraining order but told the government to provide her and the plaintiffs’ attorneys “enough notice before some major thing happens” so it could be reviewed first, according to court filings. The government agreed.
The plaintiffs said they received notice of this weekend’s massive tree removal about 12 hours before it happened, and that the government represented it as “maintenance activities” unrelated to Trump’s plans.
In a filing, the DOJ said the Interior Department was merely implementing recommendations from a 2019 “Cultural Landscape Report,” which was aimed at restoring the course closer to its original design.
The plaintiffs said in a court filing Sunday that Trump’s plan for the site would “require massive tree-clearing.”
“Defendants would have this Court believe that this unprecedented operation is merely the sudden and purely coincidental fulfillment of recommendations posited in a Cultural Landscape Report seven years ago and is totally unrelated to the ongoing implementation of the Washington National plan,” they wrote.
“Even if Defendants were entitled to the benefit of the doubt, they are not entitled to a suspension of disbelief.”
Reyes, who was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, stressed that she wasn’t happy about having to issue the restraining order, saying, “I don’t think courts should be playing parks and rec.”
White House adviser Stephen Miller suggested in a post on X that the judge should stay out of it.
“I missed the part of the Constitutional Convention that put federal judges in charge of golf course maintenance,” he wrote.
