The Trump administration abruptly cut down more than 400 trees at the historic East Potomac Golf Links in Washington, D.C. last weekend. Federal judge orders testimony from two top Interior Department officials; the judge plans to hold another hearing on October 19.
Tyrone Turner/WAMU for NPR
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Tyrone Turner/WAMU for NPR
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from cutting down additional trees at a Washington, D.C. municipal golf course, the latest example of a court intervening in the government’s efforts to reshape pieces of the nation’s capital.
The long-running fight over the East Potomac Golf Links — which President Trump wants to redevelop into a championship-level course — erupted over the weekend, after the administration cut down hundreds of trees without notice.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in May ordered the administration to get court approval before cutting down more than 10 trees on the golf course. On Friday, shortly before 5 p.m., authorities informed the court of their plan to cut down “up to 529 trees” in stages starting Saturday – and had razed at least 430 by the end of the day, prompting Reyes to call an emergency hearing on Monday.
“What happened cost the government all of its credibility in this matter,” Reyes said during the nearly four-hour hearing, held via videoconference.
Reyes ordered a short-term halt to deforestation, which she extended on Tuesday until October 26. She warned Monday that “if this order is violated by two seconds, there will be contempt proceedings.”
Reyes also ordered top officials from the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service to testify at a hearing next Monday, to shed light on the government’s motivations and the future of the historic trail.
“The question is whether I was lied to or not,” Reyes said. “Was I lied to in my statements about the plans, whether or not I was lied to about the timeline of events, and whether I was lied to about what kind of notice the court was going to receive.”
East Potomac has emerged as another flashpoint in Trump’s unilateral quest to remake Washington, D.C., and it is being litigated by critics who fear it could go the way of the White House’s now-lost East Wing unless a court intervenes. The DC Preservation League, along with two concerned residents, sued the government in February for what it calls an illegal takeover.
“This is a tactic we’ve seen before from the Trump-Vance administration: moving quickly to irrevocably alter a treasured national monument, just to advance another of President Trump’s pet projects,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward — one of the companies involved in the lawsuit — said over the weekend.
Perryman told NPR on Tuesday that the golf course is the latest in a strategy by the Trump administration “that undermines the entire process of checks and balances in this country, which includes undermining legal processes.”
Trump has long floated the idea of redeveloping East Potomac into a championship-caliber course and announced plans to do so earlier this year, although his target start date of Sept. 1 passed without a formal proposal.
That prospect — and the lack of clarity since — has alarmed residents worried about losing access to the historically affordable course and surrounding recreation area, popular with cyclists, runners, fishermen and picnickers.
“This is a bigger story than just golf, especially when there’s been this little bit of transparency, … to say, ‘This is what the future of this little man-made peninsula is actually going to look like,'” Alex Rosen, a Washington-based consultant who launched the nonprofit Save East Po, told NPR in July.
A National Park Service official said in a court filing Friday that renovation plans “remain in the conceptual stage.” And the Interior Department told NPR in a statement Tuesday that it is “committed to continuing the relationships we have built with local golf communities to ensure these courses are safe, beautiful, open, affordable, enjoyable, accessible and world-class.”
But critics are increasingly concerned about the process itself. They fear the Trump administration will use so-called routine maintenance as an excuse to begin redevelopment without proper permitting.
“You can’t continually say, ‘There’s no plan’ … when you’re clearly taking steps to implement a plan,” Rosen, who is not involved in the lawsuit, told NPR after watching the hearing. “That’s frankly a lie.”
Why this rush? The court hopes for answers next week
During Monday’s hearing, Reyes regretted not issuing a formal restraining order sooner, which she said was because “I did everything humanly possible to give the government the benefit of the doubt in this matter.”
For example, after the administration quietly removed what it has since said were about 150 dying and overgrown trees in late August, Reyes acknowledged that people were upset but refused to intervene: “I’m not the Lorax,” she said at a hearing in early September.
By Monday, the benefit of the doubt was gone. When a government lawyer said they had done their best to inform the court, Reyes reprimanded sharply.
“You didn’t do your best,” she said, her voice raised. “You did the worst.”
Perryman of Democracy Forward said: “What was really remarkable about yesterday’s hearing was that the government seemed to have no defense for its failure to inform the court. »
In Friday’s court filing, National Mall and Memorial Parks Superintendent Kevin Griess described the clearing as part of an effort “to address deferred maintenance needs and implement treatment recommendations to restore the cultural landscape.”
Griess specifically cited a 2019 National Park Service report on Washington, D.C.’s municipal golf courses, which says several waves of tree planting in East Potomac over the past century have obscured views and changed the feel of the course from its original 1920s “links-style” design.
Griess said in his filing that the NPS was able to act on the report because it received a temporary increase of “approximately 20 to 50 trained personnel capable of performing labor-intensive grounds maintenance activities.” Under questioning in court, he confirmed that the increase was related to the administration’s 250th anniversary events, including the IndyCar race on the National Mall in August.
But critics are skeptical, given the president’s public statements. Alex Dickson, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement that “the administration is using a preservation report as cover to begin deleting the course for which it was written.”
Griess said he got the green light last week from Frank Lands, the park service’s deputy director of operations. At the judge’s request, Lands then joined the hearing from his car in a parking lot. He said he received the directive from Greg Wischer, deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Wischer could not be reached to join the hearing, despite Reyes’ request to do so. She ordered Wischer and Jessica Bowron, acting director of the National Park Service, to testify at another hearing next Monday.
The Interior Department did not respond to NPR’s questions about timing and resources for deforestation, but said in a statement that “President Donald J. Trump is fulfilling his pledge to make DC safe and beautiful, as evidenced by working fountains, clean parks and safe streets across the District for the first time in decades.”
On Tuesday, in granting the plaintiffs’ request for an extended restraining order, Reyes wrote that they had “proven that they would likely suffer irreparable harm absent an injunction.” She also said the government must provide “three business days’ written notice before making any irreparable changes” to the golf course.
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