President Donald Trump announced Sunday that East Potomac Golf Links, the busiest public golf course in Washington, will close on November 15 for a renovation expected to last about 15 months, a declaration that directly contradicts what his own Justice Department has told a federal judge for months. Government lawyers have repeatedly assured the court that any plan to rebuild the historic course was conceptual and preliminary, and nowhere near final.
Then the president unveiled a detailed design from architect Tom Fazio on Truth Social, complete with a start date, a timeline, and a boast that the USGA, the PGA of America, and the PGA Tour had already been notified. He wants the course to host the US Open, the Ryder Cup, and the PGA Championship.
By 6 a.m. Monday, hours before his own Interior Department officials were due to testify, Trump was attacking the judge directly, calling US District Judge Ana Reyes “a crazed lunatic” and insisting his renovation needs no court approval at all. The Justice Department had already demanded she remove herself from the case. She refused, and the government’s officials spent Monday afternoon answering her questions under oath.
The Plan His Lawyers Swore Did Not Exist
The gap between what Trump says publicly and what his lawyers say in court is now the administration’s central problem. National Park Service officials told Reyes just last week that they knew of no formal renovation plan beyond what Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had posted on social media. One government attorney went so far as to tell the court Monday that no plan exists to close the course “as those words have their literal meaning.”
The president of the United States, meanwhile, had just told the entire country the course closes November 15.
Reyes spent a contentious Monday hearing pressing for an explanation and told the government’s lawyers she did not know what to do when she keeps getting different stories. She reminded them this is not, in her words, “just some putt-putt course.” The hearing ended without a decision, and her order barring the administration from cutting down any more trees remains in place through October 26.
More Than 400 Trees Gone In A Single Weekend
Reyes’s distrust of the government traces back to Columbus Day weekend. The administration notified the court late Friday afternoon that tree removal would begin the next morning. By the end of the weekend, crews had felled more than 400 trees at East Potomac, and the Park Service later disclosed the full project targets roughly 729.
Reyes had ordered the administration back in May to get court approval before removing more than 10 trees at the course. The government claims the cutting was routine landscape work tied to a 2019 preservation report, not Trump’s golf project. Reyes rejected that explanation in a blistering written ruling, concluding that officials raced through the removal at breakneck speed because the president demands haste on his redesign. Published satellite images of the course taken days apart show two enormous swaths of the property stripped bare.
She told government lawyers they had lost all credibility with her and that she saw a strong showing of bad faith. She noted that destroyed trees cannot be replaced.
Attacking The Judge Instead Of Answering Her
The administration’s response to a judge asking who ordered the chainsaws was not an answer. Instead, it filed a Friday motion accusing Reyes of open hostility and demanding she step aside from the case. On Monday, she refused to step down and proceeded with testimony from Interior deputy chief of staff Gregory Wischer and acting Park Service director Jessica Bowron, while Justice Department lawyers repeatedly invoked privilege to shield questions about who gave the orders.
Trump’s Monday morning post did the rest, smearing a sitting federal judge as possibly insane and declaring that the golfers suing to protect their public course have “ZERO STANDING.”
A Public Course Becomes A Presidential Trophy
East Potomac is a century-old municipal course where Washingtonians learn the game at municipal prices, operated by the nonprofit National Links Trust under a 50-year lease. Trump’s vision replaces it with a championship showpiece, adding to a growing list of capital remodeling projects he has claimed for himself, from the Kennedy Center takeover to the East Wing demolition that funded his corporate-backed ballroom at the White House.
The pattern repeats every time. The president decides a public space belongs to him, his administration tells the courts as little as possible, and the destruction starts before anyone can stop it. This time, a federal judge caught the government saying one thing in her courtroom while the president told the country the opposite, and the trees were already on the ground. Democratic Reporter will keep following this case as Judge Reyes weighs what happens next.
