Judge extends order blocking Trump administration from clearing trees at D.C. golf course

The judge presiding over a court fight involving President Donald Trump’s plans to redo a public golf course in Washington, D.C., issued an order Tuesday temporarily barring the administration from knocking down more trees at the site. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes handed down the order a day after an emergency hearing in which she accused the government of engaging in deception to knock down more than 400 trees at the East Potomac Golf Links over the holiday weekend. “The Court ORDERS that Defendants may not fell any further trees on the East Potomac Golf Course through Monday, October 26,” the judge wrote in a directive posted on the docket. Reyes is overseeing a lawsuit filed by a preservation group and two Washington residents challenging Trump’s golf course renovation. Earlier this year, she denied the plaintiffs’ request for a restraining order in the case after administration lawyers assured her they would give her and the plaintiffs ample notice of any large-scale work being done on the course. On Friday, attorneys for the Justice Department said in court papers filed shortly before 5 p.m. that the National Park Service would be removing roughly 500 trees from the course over the three-day holiday weekend. That work started Saturday morning, a park official testified in court Monday, and 430 trees were knocked down. The official, National Mall and Memorial Parks Superintendent Kevin Griess, said workers had identified about 300 more trees that still need to be cut down, but they weren’t able to work Sunday because of bad weather. Reyes told lawyers for the Justice Department at the hearing that she was “furious” with the government. “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. “What has happened has cost the government all of its credibility,” Reyes added. The administration argued in a filing Friday that the work was for “maintenance activities” that were unrelated to Trump’s plans to transform the 100-year-old course into championship-style greens. It said it was implementing recommendations from a 2019 “Cultural Landscape Report” aimed at restoring the course closer to its original design. The plaintiffs, which include the D.C. Preservation League, scoffed at the argument in court papers, saying that there would have been no mad scramble to implement a years-old plan — and noting 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,” they said. Reyes has demanded to know how the decision to chop down the trees came together. She initially ordered a follow-up hearing with testimony from a top official at the Interior Department on Tuesday but issued an order in the morning delaying the hearing until next Monday. She also directed National Park Service acting Director Jessica Bowron to appear. Reyes, a Biden-appointed judge, had made clear at a hearing last month that she’d been hoping to avoid issuing a restraining order in the case. “I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees. I am a judge,” she said then.