Judge Orders New Hearing After Trump Vows to Defy Order Blocking D.C. Golf Course Overhaul

A federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration back into court this week after the president declared on social media that he would proceed with closing and rebuilding a public golf course in the capital despite a judge's order requiring advance notice before any further work. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes set a new emergency hearing for Friday or Monday, saying President Trump's statements directly contradicted testimony her own Justice Department lawyers had given under oath days earlier.

The dispute centers on East Potomac Park Golf Course, a 36-hole public facility on National Park Service land along the Potomac River that the administration wants to demolish and replace with a single championship-caliber course. The fight has become one of the sharper confrontations yet between the federal courts and the White House over whether the administration will comply with judicial orders it disagrees with.

A Ruling, Then Defiance

On Monday, Reyes issued a 70-page opinion granting a preliminary injunction in DC Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, the lawsuit filed in February by the preservation group and two D.C. golfers against the Interior Department, the National Park Service and Secretary Doug Burgum. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges the administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by quietly finalizing a redesign — which plaintiffs call the "Washington National Plan" — without the environmental and historic reviews such a project would normally require.

Reyes's order bars the government from cutting, substantially pruning or otherwise damaging any more trees in the park without court approval, and requires at least ten business days' written notice before closing the course or making any other "irreversible" change. The injunction followed the felling of roughly 430 trees on the property with less than a day's notice, an episode the government said was unrelated routine vegetation management recommended in a 2019 Park Service report. Reyes called that explanation "pretextual," finding the clearing was in fact tied to the unannounced renovation plan, which she concluded had become final "well before October 15."

Hours after the ruling, Trump posted on Truth Social that construction would begin as scheduled, that the Interior Department would appeal, and that the course would close November 15 for roughly 15 months of work. He wrote that Reyes "has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project" and argued that requiring the government to give the court advance notice was "not fair, appropriate, or Constitutional." On Tuesday, Reyes gave the government roughly 24 hours to clarify whether a closure plan in fact existed; on Wednesday she went further, ordering the new hearing and noting that the president's public statements flew in the face of what administration lawyers had told her under oath.

What the Judge Found

The clash over credibility had been building for weeks. At an October 19 hearing that ran roughly seven hours, Justice Department attorney Robert Stander told Reyes the redevelopment plan was not yet final even as Trump had posted that morning that work would begin "immediately." When Stander allowed that the president's post was "true with a caveat, that the plan is not final," Reyes pressed him directly.

"Do I believe the president of the United States, or do I believe you?" Reyes asked.

That same week, the Justice Department had moved to have Reyes removed from the case, accusing her of "deep-seated and unequivocal antipathy" toward the administration. Reyes rejected the recusal request, writing that "it is easy to weaponize selective quotations to bring a baseless recusal motion" but "much harder to meet the demanding legal standard against a full record." She also disclosed that she had received death threats over her handling of the case and that her mother and brother had called her after seeing news reports about them. "A federal judge is getting death threats over a golf course," she said. "I really don't think that's what the founders envisioned." Trump had called her a "crazed lunatic" in an earlier Truth Social post.

Interior officials, including deputy chief of staff Gregory Wischer, testified they knew of no finalized plan for the course. Reyes found that testimony hard to square with Trump's repeated public statements that construction was imminent, and with the scope of the tree removal already underway. She wrote in her opinion, according to reporting on the ruling, that the government "has made no compelling factual rebuttal" to evidence the plan was already final.

A Public Course With a Civil Rights History

East Potomac's three public courses date to 1918–1923, when the original 18 holes were laid out by golf architect Walter J. Travis, according to the National Park Service's own history of the site. The agency's account also notes that in 1941 the course was the site of efforts to desegregate Washington's public golf courses, part of a broader civil-rights push across the city's recreational facilities between 1941 and 1954. The property has operated as public recreation land for more than a century, run for the past three decades under concession agreements and, more recently, through a 50-year lease arrangement between the Park Service and the nonprofit National Links Trust.

Trump has argued the existing course is deteriorated and underused. "It's old, it's tired, it's beaten up, it's useless," he told reporters at one point, adding that "we want to do something great for Washington" and that the project "should be very simple." He has said the rebuilt course, designed with golf architect Tom Fazio, would be capable of hosting events such as the PGA Championship or Ryder Cup while remaining open to the public, including at a discounted rate for D.C. residents. Planning documents reviewed by CNN in September put preliminary cost estimates for the project in a range of roughly $20 million to $49 million; an Interior Department spokesperson disputed that figure at the time, saying no final design existed from which to estimate costs — the same no-final-plan position the administration has taken in court.

Plaintiffs and preservation advocates dispute that framing. The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse's case record, maintained by the University of Michigan Law School, shows the suit seeking to set aside the plan and block its implementation entirely, not merely to pause it pending review. Democracy Forward, the legal organization representing the plaintiffs, has argued the case is about more than recreation; its president and chief executive, Skye Perryman, said earlier this year that the fight over public access to the park is "about our democracy as a whole."

What Comes Next

Reyes's new hearing is set for either Friday or the following Monday, according to her order, to force the administration to reconcile the president's public statements with its sworn representations in court. The Interior Department has said it intends to appeal the preliminary injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Trump has continued to insist that construction will begin November 15 regardless of the litigation's outcome, a timeline that would put the administration on a collision course with Reyes's order if the closure proceeds without the required ten business days' notice or further court authorization.

The outcome will determine, in the near term, whether one of the few remaining affordable public golf courses in central Washington closes for an extended renovation this fall, and more broadly, whether a federal district court can enforce a preliminary injunction against a White House that has publicly signaled it may not comply. Coverage of the case has noted that Reyes has not blocked maintenance work outright and has left open a path for the government to proceed if it follows the process she has laid out — but her latest order makes clear she does not consider the administration's public commitments and its courtroom representations to currently match.