Public Notice is proudly celebrating 5 years of independent journalism. Our coverage is possible thanks for paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️
Who gives a shit about a golf course?
With everything else on fire, what does it matter if the president takes over a spit of reclaimed land south of the National Mall?
It’s a fair question, and the answer is that we all lose when the president commandeers a public institution and turns it into a monument to himself — particularly when he does it using taxpayer dollars and without congressional authorization.
It matters when Trump tears down the East Wing of the White House, or befouls the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, or shutters the Kennedy Center. And the litigation to stop him from destroying those civic institutions is a key front in the battle over the limits of executive power.
Par for the people
In 1897, Congress set aside East Potomac Park to be "forever held and used as a park for the recreation and pleasure of the people." For a century, the city’s residents enjoyed a cheap, egalitarian course, accessible to players of moderate skill, with mini golf for the kids. But in 2025, Trump set about remaking the nation’s capital in his own image, and that included the city’s municipal links.
Last October, in an act of perverse desecration, the Park Service trucked in tens of thousands of cubic yards of demolition debris from the East Wing to be used as fill for the newly designed course.
The DC Preservation League and two regular golfers sued in February, arguing that the administration had failed to conduct the required historic preservation review and violated the environmental laws by dumping asbestos- and lead-contaminated rubble on the course. Their suit relies on the Administrative Procedure Act, which allows courts to set aside a “final agency action” that is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”
But for eight months, the government argued that there was no final agency act to challenge, because there was no final plan to overhaul East Potomac Park — even as Trump and his minions posted gleefully about their plans to do just that.
On May 14, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tweeted that he was “Excited to unveil the design for the East Potomac Golf Links renovation from Fazio Design.”
On June 28, after touring the course with Burgum and golf-course designer Tom Fazio, Trump posted that "on this fantastic site, with water and unparalleled views of DC’s Monuments, we will build one of the Greatest Golf Courses anywhere in the World," adding that “work on the new Course, which will go quickly, will begin on September 1."
But in court, the government told Judge Ana Reyes over and over again that there was no imminent plan to renovate the course, rubbishing Burgum’s post as nothing more than a “rudimentary conceptual design.” And so on three separate occasions, the judge took the government at its word and refused to grant the plaintiffs injunctive relief. All she asked was that lawyers from the government agree to inform the court before any major alteration, defined as cutting down more than 10 trees. Which they did.
Improving the lie
On October 6, acting National Park Service director Jessica Bowron attested that “plans for renovating the East Potomac Golf Course remain in the conceptual stage” and “no final decision has been made regarding the nature and scope of any renovations.”
But just three days later, at 4:55 p.m. on the Friday before a holiday weekend, the government notified the court that the Park Service would begin removing trees the next morning. By Saturday afternoon, crews had felled about 500 "healthy, non-invasive trees,” and were only stopped from cutting down hundreds more by torrential rains.
An apoplectic Judge Reyes summoned the parties to court on Indigenous People’s Day, where the government insisted that the trees were removed pursuant to a 2019 Cultural Landscape Report. It was a mere “coincidence” that it took place after Trump demanded that work start September 1.
Judge Reyes didn't buy it.
"It is a coincidence, the Government seems to suggest, that DOI cut down hundreds of trees at the Course weeks after the President asked DOI to cut down trees at the Course, and not, say, any other time in the last seven years," she wrote. "That asks rather a lot of coincidence."
Mulligan
After that disastrous hearing, the DOJ went on offense.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter accused Judge Reyes of failing to “maintain an appropriate temperament” — because she dared to notice that government lawyers had lied to her for the better part of a year.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward filed a motion demanding that Judge Reyes recuse herself from the case and accusing her of “histrionics” and “an unorthodox and regrettable show of judicial impropriety.”
Using social media to summon an avalanche of death threats for judges is a tried-and-true Trump litigation tactic — one Todd Blanche defended as a protected exercise of his client’s sacred, First Amendment rights back when he was Trump’s personal lawyer.
But it’s pretty ballsy for a top DOJ official to complain about judicial impropriety in an AI-generated tweet about “ROBES UNRAVELED.”
Judge Reyes denied the motion, noting that “it is easy to weaponize selective quotations to bring a baseless recusal motion. But it is much harder to meet the demanding legal standard against a full record.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for the government were still insisting that no renovation was imminent. On Friday, October 16, DOJ told Judge Reyes that "the President's mention of a possible project, in a handful of tweets, demonstrates at most that the President has given preliminary thought to it."
This is another play we’ve seen the Trump administration run time and again: Argue that the plaintiffs are too early to get emergency relief, while telling whatever preposterous lies will get the courts to stand down. Then send in the bulldozers and say it’s too late to undo the damage.
In July 2025, Trump promised that his ballroom "won't interfere with the current building." By October, the East Wing was a pile of rubble on this very golf course.
When Judge Christopher Cooper blocked Trump's latest attempt to slap his name on the Kennedy Center, the board voted to close the building, and Trump warned that "it will end up being ripped down."
The DOJ argued that coating the Reflecting Pool in thick epoxy was “routine maintenance and repair” with “trivial aesthetic and environmental impact,” convincing a judge that the work was “both reparable and temporary.” Five months later, it’s still a dysfunctional mess.
In this case, the posting for a "Construction" project to "Rehabilitate East Potomac Park Golf Course" was "not a contract solicitation or advertisement," the government insists, merely a "forecast."
That position became harder to maintain after Trump spent the past weekend posting that the course would be closed starting November 15 and that work would begin “IMMEDIATELY!”
Fore
After Trump admitted that the course is going to be bulldozed in a month, the government staked out an even more aggressive position at Monday’s hearing. Now they claim that separation of powers means that courts have zero authority to constrain the president at all if he decides to undertake a major construction project.
Judge Reyes responded with an impromptu lecture on the three, co-equal branches of government and the judiciary’s role in checking the excesses of the executive. She was clearly gobsmacked that a lawyer for the federal government would claim that the president can do anything he likes with federal land and judges are powerless to stop him.
But shorn of all the prevarication and lies about chopping down trees — fire the writers! — that’s the Trump administration’s position: Trump is a law unto himself, and no court can constrain him.
“The United States Department of Interior wants to take a terrible and very unsafe golf course, and make it into a great, safe, and prestigious golf course. They have an absolute right to do so. It’s as simple as that!” Trump posted Monday. “The experts at ‘Interior’ are allowed to do this First Class renovation ‘as of right.’ They do not need an approval.”
And that is why these cases matter. This is about whether the judiciary can constrain this president for the next two years, or whether he will be permitted to simply bulldoze the rule of law en route to bulldozing a public park and turning it into a walled garden for his own amusement.
So who gives a shit about a golf course? Trump does — enough to lie to a federal judge about it, then call her insane when she noticed. The rest of us should care at least that much.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s PN, please do your part to keep us free by signing up for a paid subscription.
Thanks for reading.
I give a shit about 500 mature trees — on a golf course, or not.
Of particular note: This president - in the name of “beautifying” D.C. - wants to convert a golf course dedicated to the American people into a luxury resort dedicated to himself.