A federal judge temporarily blocked the National Park Service from cutting down any more trees at the East Potomac Golf Links after the service began removing hundreds of trees on the golf course on Saturday.
Biden-appointed district judge for the District of Columbia Ana C. Reyes issued a minute order ahead of a 10 a.m. hearing on Monday, ordering the Trump administration to halt the removal of any trees from the Washington, D.C., golf course until Tuesday at 7 a.m. Reyes’s order and hearing came as the latest development in the legal saga between the Trump administration and historic preservationists seeking to stop President Donald Trump from renovating the golf course.
The DC Preservation League, which is suing the Interior Department, asked Reyes for a temporary restraining order, telling the court that the administration removed 529 trees from the course on Saturday. However, according to the Washington Sun, the Trump administration said during the hearing that it removed 430 trees from the course this past weekend.
In the Monday morning hearing, Reyes railed against the administration for chopping down the trees without her approval, saying the move “has cost the government all of its credibility,” according to Politico.
Reyes had previously told the Department of Justice in May that it would need to notify the court if it sought to remove more than 10 trees from the property. When DOJ lawyers told Reyes they were not aware of the tree removal plans over the weekend, Reyes told the attorneys on Monday, “Ignorance is not an excuse,” per the outlet.
Reyes clarified in the Monday morning order that the trees removed for “routine maintenance” purposes are not exempt from her order, after an NPS official said the agency was conducting the tree removal as part of an effort to “address deferred maintenance needs” on the property.
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Kevin Griess, superintendent of NPS’s National Mall and Memorial Parks sector, submitted a declaration on Friday that the agency would be removing no more than 529 trees that he said “do not contribute to the historic landscape” as part of a park maintenance and cultural landscaping project. DOJ attorneys wrote in their notice to the court on Friday that NPS’s “restoration activities are a separate agency decision” and are distinct from the course renovation issue at hand in the case.
The DC Preservation League had requested a 14-day TRO on tree removals in its Sunday emergency motion.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
