A Biden-appointed federal judge quoted Dr. Seuss to block an elected president’s plan to renovate a public golf course in the nation’s capital. Ana C. Reyes, a Judge for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order stopping crews from removing trees at the 106-year-old East Potomac Golf Course. In a footnote, she wrote: “Just ask the Lorax.”
The order remains in effect until Monday, October 26, 12 days from today.
One Judge, One Order
The Department of the Interior ordered the work as part of its renovation plans. Roughly 430 trees came down in early October, according to the legal filing, which says the National Park Service carried out the removals. At a hearing Monday, Reyes put the number above 500 and said the government’s removal of trees without adequate notice had “cost the government all of its credibility” in the case. She said she was at a “total loss” over the government’s actions.
Reyes wrote that “the ground, landscape and vistas will be irrevocably altered” because “destroyed trees cannot be replaced.” She also offered her view of the government’s motives. “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.
The judge reached that conclusion on what she herself called a “limited record.”
What the Administration Says
The Interior Department tells a different story. A 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 added that the work “will include selective tree and vegetation work to restore the course,” guided by the 2019 Cultural Landscape Report, and help restore the course’s “historic character and reopen views toward landmarks.”
The government says a 2019 National Parks Service report recommended the changes. It said a championship-style venue would require removing several hundred trees. President Donald Trump confirmed the plans in a June post on Truth Social. He called the course “virtually unplayable” and said it would be built to the “Highest Standards of Golf,” but “in such a way that the General Public will love it.”
The course is public. Trump said it should stay that way.
The Litigation Machine
The ruling fits a pattern: Trump’s Washington renovation projects have drawn legal challenges at nearly every turn. The East Wing ballroom has faced legal challenges and criticism. The nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation challenged the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool renovation, arguing the administration failed to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act. The Arlington County Board is seeking to halt what it calls the “feverish pace” of construction on the proposed triumphal arch in front of Arlington National Cemetery.
Skye Perryman, the Democracy Forward President and CEO, attacked the plan 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,” she said. Democracy Forward says on its website that it challenges “abuses of power that undermine good government.”
The course also has a civil rights history. Black golfers challenged segregation there in 1941, 85 years ago, prompting then-Interior Secretary Harold Ickes to order that it open to all players. The administration says its aim is to keep the course public.
Who Decides
The sequence is plain. A president campaigned on rebuilding the capital. His Interior Department invoked a plan that, by its own account, dates to 2019. In days, an advocacy group and a single appointed judge stopped the work; the judge reached for a children’s book to do it. The White House referred questions to the Department of the Interior.
The restraining order runs through October 26. What happens next at the course, and who gets to decide, is now a question for the courts.