WASHINGTON — Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia took the Justice Department at its word. Earlier this year she declined to block work at East Potomac Golf Links after administration lawyers assured her the plaintiffs and the court would get ample notice of any large-scale work, NBC News reported.
The notice came shortly before 5 p.m. on the Friday of a three-day holiday weekend. Crews started cutting on Saturday morning, and by Monday Reyes was telling government lawyers, “I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done.” The episode, she said, “has cost the government all of its credibility.”
On Tuesday she extended an order barring the Trump administration from felling any more trees at the 100-year-old public course through October 26. The government must also give advance written notice before any irreparable change at the course.
The government calls the cutting maintenance. It says the work carries out a 2019 Cultural Landscape Report meant to return the course closer to its original design, and that it has nothing to do with Trump’s plan to remake the course into championship-style greens. The plaintiffs, the D.C. Preservation League and two residents, say the scale and timing point to that plan, which Trump announced in a June Truth Social post calling the current course outdated and dangerous, NBC News reported. They argue the government is splitting a large project into small ones to avoid environmental review.
The officials who ran the work undercut the urgency. Kevin Griess, superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks, testified that 430 trees had been felled and that none had been identified as a hazard. He and Frank Lands, a deputy director of the Park Service, both said there was no urgency to cut on Saturday. Griess said he sent the tree-management plan up on October 5 and had approval the next day, with staff free for the job after August’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix.
The numbers do not reconcile. The government’s filings put the toll at 430 trees with about 99 more flagged, a projected 529 in all. Griess told NBC News that roughly 300 more had been identified. The plaintiffs’ lawyers say crews cut all 529 on Saturday alone, including what they called “healthy, mature oaks and maples.”
Reyes did not hide her temper. She told Justice Department lawyer Marissa Piropato she was “furious,” and said of the notice effort, “You did not do your best. You did your absolute worst.” Ignorance, she said, “is not an excuse here.” She also noted that the officials’ accounts conflicted with a sworn filing saying no significant rehabilitation work would start before compliance requirements were met, CBS News reported.
Her next step reaches higher up the chain. She has ordered Jessica Bowron, acting director of the National Park Service, to appear at a hearing on Monday, and she wanted to question Gregory Wischer, a deputy chief of staff at the Interior Department, whom Piropato could not reach. Stephen Miller, a White House adviser, answered on X by criticizing the judge for involving federal courts in golf course maintenance, according to NBC News.
Hundreds of trees are already gone. “I do not understand why this went forward on Saturday,” Reyes said.
