DOJ News: East Potomac Golf Course to Close Nov. 15
The Justice Department has told a federal judge that the government is now working to carry out President Donald Trump’s order to close East Potomac Golf Links in Washington, D.C., by November 15, reversing the position its own lawyers took in court only weeks ago. In a filing made on Wednesday, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward acknowledged that Trump had twice directed the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service to shut the historic public course so it can be redesigned, and said the department is developing a plan to implement that direction. The filing is the latest turn in a lawsuit that began as a dispute over a municipal golf course and has grown into a courtroom test of whether a president’s public orders can be treated by his own administration as if they were never given.
According to the filing, the National Park Service will submit a rendering designed by golf course architect Tom Fazio to the National Capital Planning Commission for review on Friday, October 30. The rendering is for what Trump has described as a world-class, championship-level course capable of hosting major events such as the U.S. Open. After that submission, the filing said, the Park Service will close East Potomac Park south of Buckeye Drive, including the golf course, on November 15, consistent with the president’s directive. The planning commission is scheduled to consider the plan at its meeting on December 3.
The statement marks a sharp change from what a Justice Department lawyer told the same court earlier this month. At a hearing on October 19, Woodward assured U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes that there was no plan to close the course on the date the president had named, even though Trump had posted on social media the day before that work would begin on November 15 and had shared a rendering of the new layout. The government added in its new filing that it would give 10 business days’ notice before any closure, a commitment that answers one of the judge’s most pointed demands.
DOJ News: What the New Filing Actually Says
The Wednesday filing is short, but its admissions matter because they settle, at least for now, the central factual dispute in the case. For months, administration lawyers had told the court that the renovation of East Potomac was only a possible project, with no final plan in place. Trump, meanwhile, announced on social media that the Interior Department, led by Secretary Doug Burgum, and Fazio had developed a plan to build a world-class championship course at the site, and that the current course would close on November 15 to allow work on the new design to begin, with the revamped course opening in roughly 15 months.
In the new filing, Woodward acknowledged Trump’s declarations, shared on Truth Social, that East Potomac will close so it can be overhauled for reasons the president listed as competitive standing, safety, modernization and aesthetics. The filing’s key sentence, as reported by multiple outlets, is that the Interior Department, acting through counsel, is working to develop a plan to implement that direction and will provide the court with notice. That is the first time the government has told the court, in its own filing, that the president’s closure order is being carried out rather than merely discussed.
The filing also gives the case its first concrete calendar since the dispute erupted. The October 30 submission to the National Capital Planning Commission puts a Fazio design formally before a review body, and the December 3 meeting gives the commission a date to consider it. The November 15 closure date applies to the parkland south of Buckeye Drive, which includes the golf course itself. The government’s promise of 10 business days’ notice before closure sits alongside the notice rules Judge Reyes already imposed, and it responds directly to her ruling on Monday, in which she requested a response from the administration about whether any plan existed to shutter the course on or around November 15.
Trump News: The Injunction That Forced the Answer
The filing did not arrive in a vacuum. On Monday, Judge Reyes issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily bars the government from removing or damaging any additional trees on the East Potomac Golf Course, and ordered the administration to give 10 days’ written notice before making any irreparable modification to any forms or features of the course while the lawsuit is active. The injunction replaced a temporary restraining order that had halted work, and it will remain in effect until a final judgment in the case.
Reyes handed down the injunction in a 70-page opinion that was unusually blunt about the gap between the president’s statements and his lawyers’ arguments. She wrote that rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting president. In the same decision she extended the ban on tree removals and found that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on a central part of their case, namely that the administration likely violated federal environmental law by cutting down trees without conducting an environmental review of the renovation plan.
The injunction followed a ruling on Monday in which Reyes also ordered an extension of the tree-removal ban and directed Woodward to attend a further hearing, which was being arranged for October 30 or November 2. Before she heard arguments last week on whether to extend that ruling, Trump announced that the course will close on November 15 for a roughly 15-month renovation. Reyes then ordered the Justice Department to say whether it was the administration’s position that the plans were still preliminary. Tensions flared after Woodward filed a brief saying nothing had changed, and in her Monday ruling Reyes found that the plan was final, confirmed not just by the president’s and the interior secretary’s posts but also by the government’s actions, not least the removal of hundreds of healthy, non-invasive trees on no real notice.
The administration has appealed the Monday ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, filing that appeal on Tuesday without explaining in detail why the higher court should overturn it. The appeal and the new filing now run in parallel: the government is challenging the judge’s order while simultaneously telling her it is preparing to do the very thing the order constrains, albeit with notice.
White House News: How a Golf Dispute Became a Credibility Case
The lawsuit was brought by the D.C. Preservation League and two golfers, represented by Democracy Forward, who argue that the administration exceeded its authority in adopting and implementing plans to overhaul the property and in skirting required environmental and historic preservation reviews. For months the litigation moved slowly, with administration lawyers telling the court the renovation was still only in its conceptual stage and no final plan existed. Officials testifying in the case, including National Park Service and Interior Department officials, said they had no knowledge of the plans Trump was announcing.
Everything changed in early October, when the administration cut down more than 500 trees on the property over a single weekend. The scale and speed of the clearing stunned the plaintiffs and the court. Reyes first halted further removals temporarily, and she agreed with the challengers that the felling was tied to the planned new course. The judge’s fury at the episode runs through her later rulings: the government, she found, had set the timing of the tree removal and the late notice in a way that impeded the plaintiffs’ ability to seek court intervention.
Then the president weighed in directly. On October 18, Trump announced on social media that the course would close on November 15 for 15 months and be rebuilt as a world-class facility, sharing a rendering of the new design. A day later he posted that work would begin immediately. At the October 19 hearing, Woodward told Reyes there was no plan to close then, the day after Trump first posted that restoration would begin on November 15. That contradiction, between the president’s posts and his lawyers’ assurances, is what turned a parks dispute into a case about the credibility of the executive branch in front of a federal judge.
Trump stood by the November 15 closure after the October 26 injunction and said his administration would appeal. He described a rebuilt course open to the public, with discounted rates for Washington residents, and said he had already notified the U.S. Golf Association, the PGA of America and the PGA Tour that they would soon have the course as an option. He has said he is renovating the links because they are old, broken and dilapidated, and of no further use in their current form, and that when the work is done the course will be open to the public and able to host world-class tournaments.
Trump Administration: The Course at the Centre of the Fight
East Potomac Golf Links sits on Hains Point, an island in the Potomac River in the nation’s capital. The facility first opened as a municipal course in 1920 on property Congress declared a public park in 1897, and for more than a century it has been maintained by the Interior Department and the National Park Service. With affordable rates, it has offered two nine-hole courses, one 18-hole course, a miniature golf course and a driving range, and it has been known for being accessible to beginners and seasoned players alike.
That accessibility is at the heart of the plaintiffs’ objection. Opponents worry that the redesign will change the character of a public facility that ordinary Washington golfers have used for generations. The rendering Trump posted on social media shows the grounds revamped into one 18-hole course and a driving range, replacing the current mix of shorter courses, the miniature course and the academy facilities. Trump has not explained whether golfers would lose access to the range, the shorter courses and the academy for the entire construction period, a question that matters to the regulars who use those facilities most.
The administration’s case for the overhaul is that the course needs investment and that a championship-level venue would be a point of pride for the capital. A course capable of hosting a U.S. Open, in that argument, would put Washington on the map for major golf in a way the current modest layout cannot. The challengers’ answer is that a public park cannot be remade by announcement, and that environmental and historic preservation reviews exist precisely to force a public accounting of what would be lost before hundreds of trees come down and a century-old layout is erased.
What Happens Next for East Potomac
The immediate calendar is now set by the government’s own filing. On Friday, October 30, the National Park Service will submit the Fazio rendering to the National Capital Planning Commission. The commission will consider the plan at its December 3 meeting. On November 15, under the filing’s terms, the Park Service will close East Potomac Park south of Buckeye Drive, including the golf course, after giving 10 business days’ notice. Each of those steps will be watched by the plaintiffs, who can return to Judge Reyes if they believe a step breaches the injunction or the notice rules.
The appeal adds a second track. The D.C. Circuit will consider whether Reyes was right to bar further tree removals and to impose the notice requirements, and whether her finding that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the environmental review claim holds up. Appeals in cases like this can take months, and the injunction remains in effect while the appeal proceeds, which means the government cannot simply cut more trees or reshape the grounds while it argues its case.
For golfers, the practical question is narrower and more immediate: whether the course will actually be available next month, and if not, for how long. The government’s filing says the closure will happen on November 15, but the injunction’s notice rules and the pending appeal mean the path to that date is not a straight line. If the commission process or the court process intervenes, the closure could slip, or its scope could change. If neither intervenes, the course that has served Washington golfers since 1920 will shut its gates on the president’s schedule, and the 15-month rebuild he has promised will begin.
What is no longer in doubt, after Wednesday’s filing, is the government’s position. The administration spent weeks telling a federal judge that there was no plan to close East Potomac on November 15. It has now told the same judge, in writing, that the president twice ordered the closure, that a plan to implement that order is being developed, and that a championship-level design will be submitted for review on October 30. Whatever the courts and the planning commission decide next, the argument that the president’s announcements meant nothing is over.
Source: The Associated Press