Trump hits a new roadblock in latest DC makeover project after judge steps in

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A federal judge berated the Department of Justice and Donald Trump’s administration for failing to give adequate notice about plans to remove hundreds of trees from the East Potomac Golf Links in Washington, D.C., the president’s latest target for his capital-wide makeover projects.

For more than 15 minutes during Monday’s emergency hearing, a furious District Judge Ana C. Reyes yelled at government attorneys for failing to alert the court and preservation groups about imminent plans to raze the public golf course, where more than 400 trees were knocked down over the weekend.

The government announced plans to begin clearing trees on Friday night. Workers and tractors were seen pulling down healthy trees early the next morning, including mature oak and maple trees, according to the plaintiffs.

“What has happened has cost the government all its credibility in this case,” Reyes said Monday.

“Why did we not find out about it until 4:55 on Friday?” she asked. “I don’t care about the details. … Do you have email? Do you have a cell phone? Do you have a regular phone? … Do you have the ability to get into a car and get places to tell them? Was there any way preventing you in some way shape or form from telling plaintiff’s counsel and this court?”

Reyes said she is at a “total loss to understand what has happened here.”

She suggested the government may have “intended to do precisely what it has done” and “intentionally” implement a plan to raze the golf course without enough time for the courts to intervene.

“What universe did anyone in your office think that was acceptable?” Reyes asked.

A government lawyer began to say “we did our best” before Reyes cut her off.

“You did not do your best!” Reyes fired back. “You did your absolute worst!”

The judge has temporarily blocked the government from making any other changes to the golf course, and “if that order is violated by two seconds, there are going to be contempt proceedings,” she said.

Trump’s proposed overhaul of the public golf course — part of his extensive plans to remake the nation’s capital with sweeping changes to the landscape and public monuments — was happening “faster than anticipated,” according to preservation groups who are suing to stop the deconstruction.

“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 Trump’s pet vanity projects,” according to Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs in the case.

“We are asking the court to act quickly before further unnecessary damage is done to a jewel of our national park system,” she added.

A lawsuit from the D.C. Preservation League and two D.C.-area residents calls on the court to halt the Trump administration’s Washington National plan, the National Park Service’s proposed efforts to replace the public park with a professional golf course intended to host private events, tournaments and wealthy golfers.

The government had previously stated that it would not take irreversible action without completing a legal and environmental review process as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

But shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, the administration announced plans to begin clearing hundreds of trees. Tractors and heavy equipment began tearing down dozens of trees the next day, according to the plaintiffs.

Kevin Griess, superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks, who was hauled into the courtroom Monday, testified that the trees were removed to return the course to “the original state of a links-style golf course,” which had “very, very, very few trees on it at all.”

Asked by the judge whether there is any urgency whatsoever to continue pulling down the trees, Griess said “not that I’m aware of.”

The Trump administration “would have this Court believe that this unprecedented operation is merely the sudden and purely coincidental fulfillment of recommendations posited in a Cultural Landscapes Report seven years ago and is totally unrelated to the ongoing implementation of the Washington National plan,” the groups wrote in court filings over the weekend.

“Even if Defendants were entitled to the benefit of the doubt, they are not entitled to a suspension of disbelief,” they added.

Rebecca Miller, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, said in a statement the government’s short notice “fails to honor previous commitments of timely communication made to the court and the plaintiffs.”

She called the government’s “sudden execution” of the tree removal “a deliberate effort” by the National Park Service and Department of the Interior to bypass the courts and “jeopardize a protected historic resource.”

“Filing late on a Friday and cutting trees at dawn the next morning sure seems to skirt everything this court asked of the administration,” said Alex Dickson, one of the plaintiffs in the case. “They seem to be moving forward any way they can, and looking for loopholes to get there.”

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