A judge halted D.C. golf course renovations. Trump says they'll still start next month

After weeks of tense hearings and late-night court filings, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from making any further alterations to East Potomac Park, the municipal D.C. golf course that the president wants to redevelop into a championship-level venue. The long-simmering legal battle kicked into high gear in recent weeks, after the government cut down 430 trees on the golf course with less than a day's notice. That prompted a pair of lengthy court hearings that at times turned heated, with government officials repeatedly insisting that the tree-clearing was unrelated to the renovations President Trump had touted on social media.

They contradicted the president's own social media posts from that very morning by saying there was no final plan for those renovations at all. "Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting president," U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote in her 70-page opinion.

"And yet, here we are." Reyes extended what was initially a two-week halt to tree removal, ordering the government not to cut down "or substantially prune or otherwise damage or impair" any trees at East Potomac Park without a court order. She also ordered it to provide "no less than ten business days' written advance notice" before closing or making any "irreversible modification" to any parts of the park while the legal battle plays out. "By issuing this preliminary injunction, the Court does not end the round: it simply marks the ball until the parties can fully and fairly litigate this case," Reyes wrote.

Monday's ruling is a win for the D.C. Preservation League and a pair of local golfers who sued to prevent renovations earlier this year — and for the growing grassroots movement to protect the municipal course and the surrounding recreational area, which is beloved by runners, cyclists, birders and others. "We are grateful the court intervened to stop the Trump-Vance administration's greed and lawlessness while the case continues, and we are eager to argue the case in court," said Skye Perryman, the president of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs.

In a Truth Social post late Monday, Trump said the Department of the Interior will appeal the ruling. NPR has reached out to the Department of Interior but did not hear back in time for publication. Trump also doubled down on his earlier announcement that construction will begin on Nov. 15 and keep the park closed for 15 months, adding that the "judge has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project." "To have to give advanced notices to a judge who has no expertise in Golf, Architecture, Landscaping, Construction, or anything else having to do with building such a World Class Project, is not fair, appropriate, or Constitutional," Trump wrote.

Reyes herself has said she is not interested in policing the federal government's landscaping efforts. That's why, as she explained in Monday's opinion, she repeatedly declined to intervene in the case — instead issuing repeated warnings against any unannounced major alterations — until "the Government did what it assured all it would not do." "The Court earlier stated, 'I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees,'" Reyes concluded.