A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday barred the Trump administration from cutting down or damaging a single additional tree at East Potomac Golf Course, the historic public course the administration has been clearing as part of a planned championship-style overhaul. U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes granted a preliminary injunction in a 70-page ruling that keeps the ban in place while the lawsuit over the project proceeds, replacing the temporary order she had earlier set to expire on Monday. The administration must also give the court and the plaintiffs 10 business days' written notice before closing the course or making any "irreparable modification" to the forms or features of East Potomac Park.
The ruling turned on a clash between what the president has told the public and what his own government's lawyers have told the court. The Justice Department argued that no final decision on a renovation plan had been made, that the National Park Service would make the ultimate call, and that the lawsuit was premature. Judge Reyes answered with the president's own words, writing: "Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President. Not to believe him that the secretary's agency will destroy a historic golf course already on the land. Not to believe him that 'Restoration work' will begin 'IMMEDIATELY!' Not to believe him that the course 'will be closed' for over a year. Not to believe what the President has repeatedly told the American public. And yet, here we are." The opinion walks through President Trump's October 18 post announcing that he and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had developed a plan to build a "World Class Championship Golf Course" at East Potomac and close it starting November 15 — and his October 19 follow-up saying the work would begin not on November 15 but "IMMEDIATELY!" "This started as a case about golf," Reyes wrote. "That good walk spoiled. But it has become much more. It now forces the Court to reconcile assertions by President Donald J. Trump with the sworn testimony of multiple government employees and the argument of senior Department of Justice attorneys." She added a line she first used earlier in the case: "The Court earlier stated, 'I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees.' The Court still does not speak for the trees. It speaks only for the rule of law." And she put the choice to the government directly: "If, as DOJ insists, President Trump is wrong, Secretary Burgum can just say so. He has not."
The judge found that the plan the government described as undecided is, at this stage, final — confirmed, she wrote, "not just by the President's and Secretary's many posts, but also by the Government's actions, not the least of which is the removal of hundreds of healthy, non-invasive trees on no real notice." She found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on their claim that the administration pushed ahead without the environmental and historic-preservation reviews federal law requires. The confrontation began on Friday, October 9, when the government posted notice at 4:55 p.m. of a plan to remove up to 529 trees; by the end of the next day, crews had felled at least 430 of them, many of them healthy mature oaks and maples, while golfers were still playing the course. Reyes wrote that the government "appears to have set the timing of the tree removal and late notice to impede Plaintiffs' ability to seek Court intervention," told government lawyers at an emergency hearing that they had "lost credibility," and rejected the administration's description of the cutting as routine maintenance or restoration, saying there was "no universe" in which the removal was intended as restoration work. The Park Service has estimated in court filings that the total number of trees to be removed under the project is 729. The only exception in Monday's order is a tree that poses an imminent threat, which the government may remove on 24 hours' notice backed by a sworn declaration from a senior Park Service official.
East Potomac sits on Hains Point in East Potomac Park, beside the Potomac River in the shadow of the Washington Monument, and at more than a century old it is one of the capital's best-known public courses — the busiest in the Washington area, hosting some 124,500 rounds in 2025. The land belongs to the National Park Service. For the past several years the course was run by the National Links Trust, a nonprofit that held a 50-year Park Service lease, awarded during President Trump's first term, to operate Washington's three public courses while keeping golf affordable; the administration terminated that lease around the start of this year and took the properties back. The president says the existing course has been allowed to fall into disrepair — he has described diseased trees and a hazardous seawall — and he wants to rebuild it as one of the best and most spectacular courses in the world, still open to the public and able to host events such as the U.S. Open and the Ryder Cup; the Park Service has said the tree work was to proceed in phases to restore the course's historic character and reopen views of nearby landmarks. Preservationists and local golfers who sued say a championship redesign would price out the public and permanently alter a historic park, and that the law required full environmental review before the first tree came down.
President Trump answered the ruling himself late Monday, posting that the course would still close on November 15 and that his administration would appeal what he called the judge's "unconstitutional" decision. "The judge has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project," he wrote. "We are asking the D.C. Circuit Court for immediate remedy." It was not his first word on the judge: in his October 19 post he called Reyes "a crazed lunatic," and the Justice Department had already tried, and failed, to have her removed from the case. The suit was brought by the D.C. Preservation League together with two local golfers. Monday's injunction does not end the fight — it freezes the park as it stands while the case is argued, and the appeal the president promised would take the same fight to the appeals court. Until a higher court says otherwise, not one more tree at East Potomac comes down.
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