A federal judge barred the administration from carrying out President Trump’s plan to close the golf course and scenic drive around Hains Point in Washington’s East Potomac Park, saying the National Park Service’s explanations for the shutdown just don’t add up.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, said Mr. Trump set an arbitrary shutdown date for Sunday, so he could begin to carry out his plans to replace the municipal golf course there right now with a championship-level facility.
His agencies have plowed ahead to try to meet the president’s demands.
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“The government proposes to close a historic park, daily enjoyed by Washingtonians of all stripes, indefinitely,” the judge wrote in a ruling late Saturday ordering the park to remain open despite Mr. Trump’s wishes.
“This closure would irreparably harm plaintiffs, who use the park regularly for recreational activities. It runs counter to the public interest in utilizing national parkland. And the government has not plausibly identified any harm it would suffer from a temporary restraining order that preserves the status quo pending further proceedings,” she said.
Her temporary restraining order directs that the park and the land the golf course is on must remain open to the public, though she said it’s up to the Trump administration whether to continue to rent tee times.
The park service, which oversees the land, had canceled the lease with the organization that had been operating the course, effective Sunday.
Hains Point is a peninsula that juts out into the Potomac River across from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
It is often described as a hidden gem, with the municipal golf course, a historical miniature golf course, picnic spots and a scenic drive around the perimeter of the peninsula with gorgeous views of the river, the Washington waterfront to the east, and Virginia’s Arlington County to the west.
Mr. Trump has decided the golf course must be replaced with a world class course capable of holding professional tour events. He said he’s worked with top golf course architect Tom Fazio on a redesign, and he declared the construction imminent, with the Nov. 15 date for shutting down the existing course.
The only problem is that the National Park Service, which oversees East Potomac Park, which includes Hains Point, had repeatedly told Judge Reyes there were no final plans.
Even now, government lawyers said there is no contract with Mr. Fazio and the golf course design Mr. Trump promotes isn’t really final, and can be changed — or scrapped — after public input.
Judge Reyes has spent the last month trying to sort through that mess, and concluded that Mr. Trump is driving the train dragging the agencies along.
She said the subterfuge isn’t reason enough to block Mr. Trump’s plans. But the fact that the park service seems to have skipped over key parts of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act are.
The park service had told the judge it was closing most of the park because of the deterioration of the seawall that supports Hains Point, and because the golf course will no longer have an operator after Sunday.
Judge Reyes said that got it backwards. The park service fired the vendor in order to carry out the closure Mr. Trump wanted.
She also said the problems with the seawall have been there for years, and there’s no evidence things have suddenly gotten worse.
She said if the safety issues were so pressing, the park service wouldn’t have allowed more than 20,000 runners in the Marine Corps Marathon to race through the park just a few weeks ago.
Adam Gustafson, a government lawyer, had told the judge at a hearing Friday that they weren’t worried about the runners as much as they feared “children walking in the dark on the deteriorating seawall, or lovebirds strolling in the evening, or any of the other things that could happen where there are fewer crowds, where there’s less supervision, where there’s less organization.”
Judge Reyes said if that were true, then the government could have gone with more targeted closures to alleviate those issues rather than the total closure.
She said the only reason for the total shutdown was to allow Mr. Trump’s golf course renovation plans to proceed.
“If the safety issues NPS identified in the Record of Determination in fact required the Park’s closure, NPS would have closed the Park or addressed the issues months ago,” she wrote.
The judge also was struck by the fact that the government admitted it couldn’t say how long the park service’s closure order would last. Indeed, the government’s lawyer admitted there isn’t even a final plan for the golf course — even as he argued the shutdown had to take place immediately.
The golf course is one of a number of projects Mr. Trump is pursuing to try to leave his stamp on the physical structures in the nation’s capital.
His planned shutdown and renovation of the Kennedy Center is on hold, as is his goal of building a massive triumphal arch at the base of Memorial Bridge, next to Arlington National Cemetery.
He has, however, demolished the White House’s East Wing and is overseeing construction of his massive ballroom, even as legal challenges still roil in lower courts.
The golf course, though, appears to hold a special place for Mr. Trump, a golfer whose personal company owns several courses.
Judge Reyes has questioned whether the Trump team is trying to pull a fast one, lying about its plans and justifications even as it operates behind the scenes to try to turn the golf course into a fait accompli — much as Mr. Trump did with demolishing the East Wing.
She has ordered an investigation into whether the administration misled her, and she kicked off a hearing Friday by demanding to know whether anyone in the government was destroying documents to hinder the probe.
After a government lawyer said they weren’t aware of any destruction, Judge Reyes said she will immediately start contempt of court proceedings if she finds out otherwise.
“If a document, I find, was intentionally destroyed or recklessly destroyed, there are going to be serious consequences,” she said.
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