Roughly 430 trees came down at East Potomac Golf Course in early October. Then a federal judge ordered the government to stop. According to a legal filing, the National Park Service cut them on orders from the Department of the Interior, as part of a plan to turn a 106-year-old public course into a championship-level venue for the president's redesign. At a hearing Monday, Judge Ana C. Reyes said more than 500 trees had been removed without adequate notice and that the government had “cost the government all of its credibility” in the case.
Reyes granted a temporary restraining order, and her filing made no effort to hide its disgust. “The reason? Disputed. The budget? Unclear. The environmental impact? Unstudied. The urgency? None. Next steps: bulldoze hundreds more,” she wrote. She added a footnote referring to the Dr. Seuss book: “Just ask the Lorax.” The order stays in effect until Monday, October 26, 12 days from today.
Who Has the Power
The judge’s findings describe how this machine ran. “The Court concludes, on this limited record, that government officials raced to undertake the TMP because President Trump demands haste on his redesign, and not because of some newfound zeal to implement a small part of a seven-year-old CLR,” the filing states. Reyes said she had repeatedly instructed the government to notify parties before major demolition began. It didn’t. She told the court she was at a “total loss” with the government’s actions.
The official line says something else. A Department of the Interior spokesperson said Monday, “The National Park Service is finally implementing a 7-year-old plan to address tree overgrowth at East Potomac Golf Course.” The spokesperson said the work would involve “selective tree and vegetation work” to restore the course’s “historic character and reopen views toward landmarks.” Selective, they said, after hundreds of trees were already gone. The White House referred Newsweek to Interior.
Trump laid out his vision on Truth Social in June, calling the course “virtually unplayable” and promising it would be built to the “Highest Standards of Golf,” but “in such a way that the General Public will love it.” The public got no say.
Who Gets Crushed
This public course in southwest Washington has a history worth knowing. Black golfers challenged segregation there in 1941, 85 years ago, and their fight forced then-Interior Secretary Harold Ickes to order the course open to all players. People organized, pushed and won access to that ground. Now an administration is reshaping it at speed to suit one man’s taste.
The filing warns that without relief, “the ground, landscape and vistas will be irrevocably altered” because “destroyed trees cannot be replaced.” More than 400 already couldn’t be saved. The restraining order came after the damage and only pauses the work. Nothing in the record suggests the project’s author has abandoned it.
The Court Trap
The pattern extends well beyond one golf course. Trump has paved over the Rose Garden, redecorated the Oval Office and started a ballroom in the East Wing, which has faced legal challenges and criticism. The Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool renovation ran into algal blooms and peeling material. The nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation challenged it, arguing the administration failed to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act. The Arlington County Board is trying to halt what it calls the “feverish pace” of construction on a proposed triumphal arch in front of Arlington National Cemetery.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said Monday: “This is a tactic we’ve seen before from the Trump-Vance administration—act quickly to irrevocably alter a cherished national landmark, just to advance another one of President Donald Trump’s pet vanity projects.” Democracy Forward describes itself as challenging “abuses of power that undermine good government.”
Notice the sequence. Power acts first. Lawyers and nonprofits scramble second. A judge issues a two-week pause third, and the trees are already stumps. The rules only bite after the chainsaws go quiet.