WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump put a date on the remaking of East Potomac Golf Links on Sunday, announcing that construction will begin November 15 and keep the public course closed for about 15 months. Earlier this month, a National Park Service official said in a court filing that renovation plans “remain in the conceptual stage.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social that the Interior Department, under Secretary Doug Burgum and with the architect Tom Fazio, “has developed a plan to build a World Class Championship Golf Course” on the site, according to CBS News. He said the new course would stay open to the public while being designed to host events such as the U.S. Open and the Ryder Cup. He called the current one “old, broken, dilapidated, and of no further use or effect.” The post did not mention the court challenge, CBS News noted.
The announcement lands inside a lawsuit brought by a preservation group and two residents. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes had accepted the government’s assurance of ample notice before large-scale work, then watched crews cut down 430 East Potomac golf course trees in a single day. “I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done,” she said, NBC News reported. Her order bars any more felling through October 26, and she requires three business days’ written notice before any “irreparable modification.”
Trump’s post points to “falling, dangerous, and disease infested trees.” Kevin Griess, superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks, told the court the 430 felled trees were not identified as hazardous or as safety concerns, CBS News reported. He has cited a 2019 Park Service landscape report as the basis for the cutting.
The plan itself is the thin part. NPR reported that the “conceptual stage” filing came from a Park Service official, and Park Service officials told Reyes last week they knew of no formal plan beyond what they had seen from Burgum and Trump’s social media posts, NBC News reported. The excerpts of Sunday’s post published by CBS News and NBC News name Fazio but give no cost or contractor.
The administration has also asked Reyes to step aside, arguing that her “histrionics in prior hearings have clearly demonstrated she is no longer impartial.” She has called the acting Park Service director and a senior Interior Department official to testify under oath on Monday. Her questions, she has said, go to whether she was “lied to in declarations about the plans,” NPR reported.
Nothing in the reporting so far shows whether the plan in Sunday’s post exists beyond the post itself, and officials are due before Reyes on Monday.
