{"id":888008,"date":"2026-10-19T19:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T19:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/888008\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T19:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T19:06:08","slug":"judge-hears-testimony-in-legal-fight-over-trumps-golf-course-renovation-plans-at-east-potomac-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/888008\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge hears testimony in legal fight over Trump’s golf course renovation plans at East Potomac Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 A federal judge on Monday questioned the Trump administration\u2019s claims surrounding its efforts to redevelop a historic Washington golf course<\/a>, challenging its contention that a recent tree-cutting spree<\/a> did not indicate work was moving forward on the project, which is temporarily blocked by a court order.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no universe in which all of this coincidentally happened all at the same time,\u201d U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during a hearing over the fate of a project that has emerged as the latest legal flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s campaign to leave his personal imprint on the nation’s capital.<\/p>\n

Reyes last week ordered a halt to the golf course’s redevelopment plans until at least Oct. 26 after scolding the government<\/a> for starting a large-scale tree removal at the course over a holiday weekend while providing little notice to the court or the plaintiffs trying to stop the makeover.<\/p>\n

Then, on Sunday, Trump announced plans on social media to close the golf course<\/a> for 15 months, starting on Nov. 15, and redevelop the 106-year-old park and course despite a court challenge by the D.C. Preservation League and two golfers. In a post on Monday, Trump said the work would start immediately.<\/p>\n

Plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys challenging the golf course renovation work have asked Reyes to extend her order that temporarily paused the work. They say the work is inflicting irreversible damage and that the redevelopment would violate the congressional act that created the park where the course is located. <\/p>\n

The hearings on the century-old golf course have grown increasingly tense and on the eve of Monday\u2019s hearing, Reyes rejected the administration\u2019s request for her to recuse herself from the case. The government questioned her impartiality and accused her of engaging in \u201cegregious\u201d behavior from the bench during last week\u2019s emergency hearing for the case.<\/p>\n

Trump, a Republican, referred to Reyes as a \u201ccrazed lunatic\u201d in his social media post on Monday. <\/p>\n

“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\u2019s as simple as that!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n

Reyes, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, said the government has failed \u201cby any objective measure\u201d to demonstrate the need for her recusal from the case.<\/p>\n

“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,\u201d she wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump has pledged<\/a> to turn the course into a world-class golf venue \u2014 part of his grand vision for Washington, D.C.<\/a>, where he has torn down storied structures, remade or renamed others and deployed the National Guard<\/a> for more than a year.<\/p>\n

While it has been open to Washingtonians of all income levels, opponents of Trump\u2019s plans for the golf course have argued it will alter the character of the space and make it less affordable to people.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s hearing started with a tense confrontation between Reyes and Justice Department official Stanley Woodward, when the judge asked if other any government attorneys in the room \u201cas officers of the court\u201d were willing to certify that everything within a Sunday filing was truthful and legally sound under federal rules of civil procedures.<\/p>\n

In that filing Woodward argued that there were no final plans for the park. <\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, the plan is not final because the Park Service has not completed its review and the details of the proposal are subject to change during the review process,\u201d the filing said.<\/p>\n

Much of the hearing revolved around Trump\u2019s social media posts over the weekend and his appearance last June at the golf course, accompanied by golf course architects and members of the administration and why there was such a sense of urgency for the cutting of the trees. <\/p>\n

The witnesses at the hearing, Greg Wischer, deputy chief of staff at the Interior Department, and acting National Park Service director Jessica Bowron both acknowledged that they had only learned of the National Park Service Cultural Landscape Report in September that led to the tree cutting. That NPS report was from 2019. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013 A federal judge on Monday questioned the Trump administration\u2019s claims surrounding its efforts to redevelop a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[59793,4,450,12,451,3,452,453,795,800],"class_list":["post-888008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-ana-reyes","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-u-s-news","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}