A ‘furious’ judge on Monday lit into the Trump administration for removing more than 400 trees from East Potomac Golf Links, the historic Washington, D.C., muni of which the Department of Interior controversially took control late last year.
The judge’s ire stemmed from a previous court order by which she had instructed the Interior Department to provide advance notice of substantive construction work on the property, including any plans to fell 10 or more trees.
At 4:55 p.m. Friday, the government submitted just such notice of pending tree removal — both to the court and the plaintiff, the DC Preservation League — but only hours before the work began. Before any dissenters or the court had time to weigh in, the tree-toppling was underway.
In all, 430 trees came down, the government said, with the stated goal of improving safety and restoring the original intent of Walter Travis’s 1920s-era design, which mostly was treeless. (It should be noted, designer Tom Fazio’s preliminary plans for the renovated course look nothing like Travis’s original design.)
Reyes, who raised her voice on several occasions during the three-hour Zoom hearing, wasn’t so much interested in the why as much as the how — as in how could the Interior Department so brazenly disregard her order?
“More than being upset and furious right now, I am just deeply disappointed in the government,” she said. “On what universe did anyone in your office think this was acceptable?”
Justice Department lawyer Marissa Piropato told Reyes that the government had done its best to provide the plaintiff details of the weekend tree-removal plans.
“You did not do your best,” Reyes said. “You did your absolute worst.”
Reyes’s anger was palpable; the more she learned about the government’s decision-making, the more enraged she seemed to become. (“I’ve never heard a judge scream at full voice at a lawyer before. Not like this,” Meidas Touch reporter Scott MacFarlane noted on X, where he was chronicling the hearing in real-time. “Trump Admin lawyer is getting excoriated.”)
In one especially tense moment, Kevin Griess, who is the National Mall and Memorial Parks superintendent, told Reyes that the tree removal had been ordered by Frank Lands, the National Park Service’s deputy director for operations.
“All right, I’m ordering Mr. Lands to appear to this hearing. Ms. Piropato, get a hold of him, get him on here ASAP,” Reyes said.
When Lands dialed in, he said the buck did not, in fact, stop with him. Lands said Greg Wischer, the Interior Department’s deputy chief of staff for policy, had told Lands to proceed with the removal. Reyes, in turn, said she wanted to Wischer to testify; the court could not immediately reach Wischer, who reports to Interior Secretary Doug Burgrum, but he is expected to testify Tuesday.
“The question is, have I been lied to about the timing of things?” Reyes said. “And what kind of notice the court was going to receive?”
Reyes issued a 24-hour halt to any further tree removal and said the order could be extended to 14 days if necessary.
Griess said the recommendation to remove the trees predates the 2026 plans for the course. He said the tree-removal program was part of a wider National Parks Service plan from 2019 called the “Cultural Landscape Report,” or “CLR.” But the plaintiffs aren’t having it. In a court filing, they argued, “Viewed in light of Defendants’ acknowledgment that they are working quickly to fulfill President Trump’s direction to fundamentally overhaul the courses at East Potomac, it strains plausibility that the ongoing tree-clearing is principally motivated by the CLR’s recommendations to ‘preserv[e] [the courses’] historic character . . . consistent with the original design intent for each course.'”
Among those who took note of the Saturday tree removal was Timothy Zurybida, director of agronomy for the National Links Trust, the D.C.-based non-profit that until recently had oversight of East Potomac. “There was nothing that could have prepared me for my [Saturday] afternoon drive around East Potomac Golf Links,” he wrote on X, alongside photos of the felled trees.
“My photos do not do justice to what happened yesterday. This was a rip and run. Get them on the ground as fast as possible. I’ve been at this nearly 3 decades. What I felt yesterday was a new emotion that I never hope to experience again.”
The tree removal and Monday hearing were just the latest flashpoints in a project that has been full of them.
Until late last year, the National Links Trust owned a 50-year lease to East Potomac and the city’s other two munis, Langston and Rock Creek, with plans to restore all three. But in December, the Trump administration terminated the NLT’s lease, citing unpaid payments and the organization’s failure to make capital improvements in a timely fashion, which the NLT refuted.
In May, the administration reversed course again, announcing that the National Parks Service would partner with several private and public entities, including the NLT, to begin “immediate renovations” of East Potomac, while handing back stewardship of the Langston and Rock Creek restorations to the NLT.
The president has big plans for the property — and so does Fazio, Trump’s self-appointed designer. As Fazio told GOLF earlier this year, “There’s not one golf course I’ve ever done that [the developer] hasn’t thought that we’d be able to hold a major championship on. We’re going to build the best golf course — the equivalent to the Aronominks and the Quail Hollows and the Shinnecocks. It’s gonna be that quality, whether you have an event or not.”
That high-end vision has sparked worry among many East Potomac regulars, who can now play the Blue course for about $40. Preservationists also have voiced concerns about how construction plans for the course could pave over its rich history.
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