Preservationists asked a federal judge Sunday night to immediately halt tree-cutting at East Potomac Golf Links, asserting in an emergency motion that government lawyers told them more than 500 trees were cut down Saturday and “hundreds of additional trees” are now slated for imminent removal.
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Attorneys challenging President Donald Trump’s proposed overhaul of the historic public golf course said they were informed Sunday that the operation had proceeded “faster than anticipated” and exhausted the original list of 529 trees in a single day. The plaintiffs said the National Park Service undercounted the trees targeted for removal and intended to resume cutting as soon as the weather permits.
Only Sunday’s rain prevented more trees from coming down, the plaintiffs said.
The D.C. Preservation League and two golfers are asking U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes to issue a temporary restraining order barring additional tree removal for 14 days. They also want the administration ordered to provide three business days’ written notice before making any irreversible changes at East Potomac.
The court had not ruled on the request Sunday night. An Interior Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is a tactic we’ve seen before from the Trump-Vance administration — act quickly to irrevocably alter a cherished national landmark, just to advance another one of President Trump’s pet vanity projects,” said Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs. “We are asking the court to act quickly before further unnecessary damage is done to a jewel of our national park system.”
The account in the emergency motion represents a dramatic expansion of the work the government outlined just two days earlier.
In a sworn declaration filed Friday, National Mall and Memorial Parks Superintendent Kevin Griess said crews would begin Saturday by removing 169 trees. An additional 90 were expected to follow, and field inspections were set to bring the eventual total to 529.
In Sunday’s motion, the plaintiffs said all 529 had already been removed. They said the Park Service produced a supplemental environmental document Sunday explaining that its original inventory had missed hundreds of additional trees.
The motion also alleges that healthy, mature oaks and maples were among Saturday’s removals. The Park Service said Friday that no healthy trees considered contributing features of the historic golf course — including historic cherry trees — would be removed.
The plaintiffs said they intend to follow Sunday’s emergency request with a motion for a preliminary injunction. Their immediate argument is based on the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to evaluate the environmental consequences of major actions before committing resources or making irreversible decisions.
Trump has tapped prominent golf architect Tom Fazio to transform the century-old public facility into a championship-caliber course that the president says could host major tournaments. The administration, however, continues to describe the redesign in court filings as a “potential project” and has not released a final design, cost, funding plan or construction schedule.
The plaintiffs accuse the administration of improperly “segmenting” the East Potomac work — dividing a larger undertaking into smaller projects and evaluating each separately, rather than considering the cumulative effects of the proposed golf-course overhaul.
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The government maintains that the cutting is a separate maintenance and restoration project that would proceed regardless of whether the administration adopts Trump’s proposed redesign.
Reyes has previously warned the administration to provide enough notice for the court to act before irreversible work begins, while making clear that she did not intend to become the course’s tree police. “I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees. I am a judge,” she said at a September hearing.
The preservation league and golfers argue that the timing of the latest notice — filed at 4:55 p.m. Friday before a holiday weekend, with cutting beginning roughly 12 hours later — deprived them and the court of a meaningful opportunity to respond.
The cutting has also prompted questions about historic-preservation review. The 2019 cultural-landscape report cited by the Park Service to justify the work also says the agency must determine whether actions affecting the historic course require review under the National Historic Preservation Act.
That law’s Section 106 process requires agencies to assess a project’s effect on historic resources, consult preservation officials and interested parties and consider ways to reduce harm before work begins.
Charles Birnbaum, president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy organization, said the scale and purpose of the cutting place it well beyond routine maintenance.
“These are very purposeful decisions being made that will alter the spatial character of the park,” Birnbaum said. “That requires a Section 106 process.”
The foundation is making a similar argument in a separate lawsuit challenging the administration’s work at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. It contends the Park Service improperly characterized changes to that historic property as maintenance rather than subjecting them to a proper preservation review.
The government has repeatedly told the court that any eventual redesign of the golf course would undergo required environmental and historic-preservation reviews. Birnbaum argues that promise does not answer whether removing hundreds of trees to restore historic views was itself an undertaking that required review.
“It is irrelevant which way this is going,” he said of the administration’s eventual plans for the course. “What’s happening is that there’s already a preservation action being undertaken by the National Park Service without doing 106.”
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