A federal decide has ordered a high Division of Justice official again into court docket after President Donald Trump posted on his social media account affirming that East Potomac Golf Course will shut Nov. 15 for renovations — instantly contradicting repeated assertions from administration officers in a listening to final week.
District Choose Ana Reyes has ordered Affiliate Lawyer Normal Stanley Woodward to make clear whether or not his prior statements to her that there have been no plans to shut the course stay correct.
She additional ordered Woodward’s attendance at a listening to both Friday or Monday the place she is anticipated to press the federal government for extra updates on its compliance together with her injunction barring additional building at East Potomac.
In a sharply worded 70-page ruling, Reyes criticized the Trump administration over its plans for the historic golf course in Washington, D.C., and concluded the administration possible violated environmental legal guidelines within the course of.
“Not often, if ever, has the US Division of Justice urged a federal court docket to not consider the sitting President,” Reyes wrote. “To not consider him {that a} cupboard secretary has ‘developed’ a federal land mission. To not consider him that the secretary’s company will destroy a historic golf course already on the land. To not consider him that ‘Restoration work’ will start ‘IMMEDIATELY!’ To not consider him that the course ‘will likely be closed’ for over a yr. To not consider what the President has repeatedly instructed the American public. And but, right here we’re.”
The case started over golf and lengthy walks, Reyes stated, however has now morphed into an effort to reconcile sworn statements made by members of the administration with statements made by Trump.
The administration should give “ten enterprise days’ written advance discover earlier than making any irreparable modification to any kinds or options of East Potomac Park, pending the result of this litigation,” Reyes stated.
Golfers drive a cart close to felled bushes after the US President Donald Trump’s administration lower down greater than 400 bushes at historic East Potomac Golf Hyperlinks, in Washington, DC, US, October 26, 2026.
Eric Lee/Reuters
Hours earlier than the listening to was set to start out, the president had posted on social media that building on East Potomac Golf Course would start instantly, regardless of the administration suggesting to the court docket that it will not.
“If, as DOJ insists, President Trump is flawed, Secretary Burgum can simply say so,” Reyes wrote. “He has not. That stated, at this juncture Plaintiffs carry the burden of displaying a ultimate plan possible exists. They’ve carried out so. That is confirmed not simply by the President’s and Secretary’s many posts, but additionally by the Authorities’s actions, not the least of which is the elimination of lots of of wholesome, non-invasive bushes on no actual discover.”
The tree elimination had been scheduled per week earlier, however Reyes concluded that these concerned within the lawsuit had little discover to cease the chopping.
The administration additionally possible violated environmental legal guidelines — particularly the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act — by “segmenting” the environmental impacts of the development, she stated.
Trump stated his administration will attraction the ruling, insisting he’ll transfer ahead along with his plans to close down the course on Nov. 15 to start out the mission.
“We’re closing the East Potomac Golf Course Website as scheduled on November fifteenth with the intention to renovate and rebuild for Aggressive (with different such tasks!), Security, Modernization, and Aesthetic causes,” Trump wrote on his social media platform in a single day.
He stated the decide’s request for updates is “unconstitutional.”
“We consider this Venture is completely ‘as of proper,’ and that the decide doesn’t have the Constitutional Proper to ‘ask for or obtain notices,’ that are time-consuming, pointless, costly, and unconstitutional. We are going to instantly attraction this resolution,” Trump wrote.
Throughout a gaggle with reporters on Monday night time after his Mississippi rally, Trump additionally stated he has a “go-ahead” to work on the renovations and blasted the decide for being an “architectural critic of golf programs.”
“It isn’t my golf course, it is a public course being in-built Washington D.C. and it has a go-ahead,” Trump stated.
He added that the present public course is “extraordinarily harmful to play” as a result of it’s too shut collectively and that he was asking the D.C. Circuit Courtroom for “speedy treatment.”
