Hundreds of trees came down at East Potomac over Columbus Day weekend, and Washington did what Washington does: it turned a public golf course into a federal case about itself.
The course sits on National Park Service land. The public uses it. The administration wants it redeveloped so it can host professional tournaments. The D.C. Preservation League sued. Judge Ana Reyes told the government to notify the court before significant changes. The saws ran on a holiday weekend anyway. Interior says the cutting was an existing effort aimed at hazardous and dying trees, unrelated to the redevelopment. Maybe that account is true. It is also the least believable way to do something true. If a judge has ordered notice, you give notice. You do not spend the long weekend cutting and walk into court with a story about coincidence.
That is not a gift to the preservationists. It is a requirement of competence. Conservatives do not get to treat process as a technicality that binds everyone except a Republican administration. Appeal what you think is wrong. Comply with what is still in force. The order barring major construction remains in force. President Trump's claim that renovations could begin November 15 does not amend it. A date posted online is not a stay.
Monday's hearing then slid, predictably, from land management into personality. Reyes heard Interior official Gregory Wischer and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron. She pressed Justice Department lawyers about filings and who was actually behind them. She demanded that line attorneys sign or add their names to a paper submitted by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., then withdrew the demand. She had already refused to recuse. Trump answered the way he answers: he attacked the judge on social media.
Some of that judicial fidgeting deserved to be walked back. A judge supervises a case. She does not get to rewrite the Justice Department's signature block because she distrusts the official who signed. Withdrawing the demand was an admission that it was theater. The president's posts were theater in the other direction. Neither one maintains a fairway.
The fight worth having is simpler, once the administration stops making it harder. East Potomac is not a wilderness and it is not a shrine. It is a public recreation facility on federal land. Trees on a golf course are not a moral constituency. Dead wood, diseased wood, and wood that drops limbs on people are a management problem. A preservation suit can force the government to follow the statutes that actually govern that land. It cannot, by the mere fact of being filed, freeze ordinary stewardship or turn a district judge into the acting superintendent.
Nor does the president's hobby settle the merits. A great deal of the heat here is golf as character evidence: Trump likes tournaments, therefore an upgrade is vanity, therefore a chainsaw is a constitutional event. That is not an argument about the Park Service. It is an argument about a man. If the contracting is crooked, prove it. If the redevelopment shuts the public out of a public course, that is a real objection, and a conservative one. Public land is not a private club with a better view of the monuments. If a specific statute forbids the work, litigate the statute. Distaste for the hobby is not a cause of action, and a clumsy holiday cutting does not make it one.
The administration's opponents have the better fact on notice and the worse theory of government. Status-quo orders exist so nobody wins by bulldozer. Notify the court, in writing, and make the plaintiffs say out loud that a dying tree must stand until a redevelopment suit ends. What they should not be handed is a veto over whether a worn public course can be made safe, usable, and good enough for serious play.
Judge Reyes does not need to run East Potomac. Interior does. It will not get there by daring her, and she will not get there by managing a golf course from the bench. Cut what is dangerous, on the record. Fight the injunction the ordinary way. And stop confusing a social media post with a building permit.
