The National Park Service thought it would cut some trees to restore the golf course at East Potomac Park on the National Mall in Washington to its historic, links-style appearance.
It ran into a “furious” federal judge who said she’d been betrayed by the removal of 430 trees from the course in a Saturday morning slashing.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said she felt duped by the Trump administration, which she said had promised her it wouldn’t do any large-scale cutting before alerting the court. She ordered an immediate halt to work on Monday morning and said there must be three business days’ notice before any further tree-cutting.
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And she unloaded on the Department of Justice and the National Park Service in a snap hearing, called on a federal holiday.
“You did not do your best. You did your absolute worst,” Judge Reyes thundered at the government’s lawyers. “More than being furious and upset right now, I am just beyond disappointed in the government.”
The trees are part of the historic public golf course that President Trump has said he wants to redevelop into a championship-level facility. That’s part of his overall vision for a makeover of public sites in the nation’s capital.
But Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall’s parks, said the tree trimming was completely separate from Mr. Trump’s plans, which he said he’s not part of and hasn’t even seen.
He said he was instead carrying out a 7-year-old plan to restore the 315-acre golf course to its historic character as an open links-style course, rather than the more vegetation-heavy parkland course that has developed.
The D.C. Preservation League, which sued to halt Mr. Trump’s plans, was incredulous — and so was Judge Reyes, who said she’d given the government plenty of leeway over the months, and now felt sandbagged.
Overhanging the case, as with so many other legal challenges to executive branch actions, were Mr. Trump’s own words.
In June, he said on social media that the course was “dilapidated” and “virtually unplayable,” and vowed to rebuild it.
He said work would begin Sept. 1, and even named Tom Fazio as the course architect.
But park service officials said the tree removal wasn’t part of that. Indeed, they said they don’t even know of any firm plans to carry out what Mr. Trump wants to do at the course.
“I have seen no plan. I have been briefed on no plan,” Mr. Griess said.
“At this point there is no plan that I am aware of,” added Frank Lands, deputy director of operations for the park service.
Both Mr. Griess and Mr. Lands started their jobs in the Biden administration, but both Judge Reyes and Abbe Lowell, a prominent D.C.-area lawyer who has regularly tangled with Mr. Trump, seemed incredulous that Mr. Trump wasn’t behind it.
Judge Reyes, though, pronounced herself “unamused” and “beyond disappointed,” and called the administration’s arguments “frustrating,” “preposterous” and “totally beyond the pale.”
“I wanted you all to be better than you have been,” she scolded.
She issued preservation orders to the park service to make sure no documents related to the decision-making are deleted.
Judge Reyes wants to know who decided which trees were to go, and when.
And she wondered why the Justice Department didn’t alert her or the D.C. Preservation League of the planned work until 4:55 p.m. on Friday, just ahead of a three-day holiday weekend and 15 hours before work actually began.
“So over a dozen government employees have been involved in the last week on an emergency effort to chop down hundreds of trees to implement a plan that has been in place since 2019. Is that what I’m hearing?” the judge said. “This seems fast to me.”
Mr. Lands said the speed was in line with other projects, such as refurbishing the fountains at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall.
Judge Reyes seemed stunned that neither Mr. Griess nor Mr. Lands had a cost estimate for the project before moving forward.
She kicked off the hearing — called by Zoom on a federal holiday — by saying she no longer trusted the government to be an honest broker.
She felt personally betrayed, saying she’d repeatedly told people she trusted the government and it was acting in good faith.
“What has happened has cost the government all its credibility,” she said.
The hearing was so sudden that Mr. Lands testified via phone from his car, in a parking lot.
“Get ahold of him, get him on here ASAP,” she ordered the Justice Department. “You had better figure out how to get him on the phone.”
Mr. Lands said he had conversations with the White House about the golf course, but it had been months.
Mr. Griess said they moved quickly on the project because a bunch of workers, who had been working on the country’s 250th celebration festivities and then the grand prix race in Washington, were suddenly available.
He said his goal was to get the golf course back to its original vision from a century ago, when it was a far more open links-style course, with open vistas of the water.
In the decades since, vegetation has closed up those views and crowded the fairways, turning it into what officials said was more a parkland-style course.
He said the peninsula that the course sits on was dredged out from the Potomac River so every tree was placed after the fact, and they don’t have a pedigree beyond that.
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