A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to stop cutting down trees at a historic Washington, D.C., golf course, and demanded to know who gave the order to start.
U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes directed the government to halt “all tree removal at East Potomac Golf Course” until 7 a.m. Tuesday unless the court acts sooner, ruling that the plaintiffs “are likely to suffer immediate and irreparable harm.” She noted that removing hundreds of trees is permanent, while a short pause wouldn’t hurt the government, since rain might hold up the work anyway. Even routine maintenance wasn't exempted.
Reyes also ordered Kevin Griess, superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, to be ready to tell her at a 10 a.m. hearing who ordered the tree removal, when he got that order, and when government lawyers first learned of the plan.
The order follows an emergency motion from the DC Preservation League and two golfers fighting President Donald Trump’s plan to turn the public course into a championship-style venue. In a Friday filing, the government said it planned to remove 169 trees starting Saturday and 90 more later, out of up to 529 in total. Griess swore the work “is not a renovation or redesign of the Golf Course” and that no healthy historic cherry trees would be cut.
The plaintiffs say the government announced the plan at 4:55 p.m. Friday, ahead of the holiday weekend, and crews arrived by 8 a.m. Saturday. They say the government then told them all 529 trees came down that day, and hundreds more were planned, and that government lawyers acknowledged only Sunday’s rain had paused the work.
The Interior Department has said the Park Service is “finally implementing a 7-year-old plan” to address tree overgrowth. The plaintiffs call that a cover for advancing Trump’s project without the environmental review federal law requires.
Reyes has repeatedly told the government not to blindside her. In May, she barred it from cutting more than 10 trees without notice and promised “serious consequences” if it tested her. At an April status conference, she said she would not accept arguments that it was too late to stop.
“I don’t want to get to a point where someone is telling me, from the government, that it’s too late, too many things have happened and now we are, like, moving forward and we can’t, you know, stop the trains,” she said, according to the filing.
The Washington Post has reported that Trump’s broader plan would also destroy the city’s oldest grove of cherry trees.