Here is the sequence of events, and it tells you nearly everything. The golf course closes Nov. 15. The design that is supposed to justify the closure goes to the National Capital Planning Commission in December. A federal judge has had to order the government to give 10 days' written notice before it cuts any more trees. Whatever this is, it is not planning. It is a demolition crew waiting for the paperwork to catch up.
East Potomac is public land, held in trust for everyone and managed by the National Park Service. It is also, by the standards of the sport, an accessible place to play: a muni-style course on a peninsula where ordinary Washingtonians have hit balls for generations. The administration now wants to turn it into a Tom Fazio "championship course." Nobody asked for that phrase. Nobody who plays there on a Tuesday after work is begging for tournament-grade golf. The people who care about championship golf are, mostly, the president and those who want to please him.
The Park Service says the property needs significant repairs. That may be true, and it is the most serious point in the administration's favor. Deferred maintenance across the park system is real, and Congress and the executive branch have starved the agency for years. But a repair program and a prestige redesign are different things. If the problem is drainage and aging infrastructure, the answer is to fix the problem with public money and keep the place open. The answer is not to close the course, hand the site to a famous architect, and call the result stewardship. And an administration that has spent a year gutting Park Service staff does not get to cite disrepair as a reason to act first and review later.
We have seen this pattern. The East Wing came down before the public had any meaningful say. Trump treats Washington's shared civic spaces as a developer treats a lot he has just acquired: something to be reshaped to his taste, with approvals arriving as a formality. The difference is that he does not own this one. We do. A man who has made golf courses a signature of his business career is now personally promoting the redevelopment of a public one. I won't claim a profit motive I can't document. But the appearance problem is of the administration's own making, and the secrecy and speed only deepen it.
The Left should be honest about its own discomfort here. Golf is not everyone's cause, and some on our side will shrug at a fight over a fairway. They shouldn't. Public goods are not defended only when they are fashionable. The principle at stake is whether public land can be closed, cleared and handed to a politically favored vision without real process, real review and a real accounting of who loses access and what they pay afterward. Plaintiffs argue that construction will damage the park, disrupt other uses and push up costs. Those are exactly the questions a planning process exists to answer, before the trees are gone, not after.
Judge Ana Reyes has demanded testimony from administration officials about the closure timeline. Good. The timeline is the whole case. If the closure date was set first and the justification assembled around it, the administration has already told us whose preferences count.
The National Capital Planning Commission should not be a rubber stamp for a decision made months ago. If the redesign is as sound as the administration claims, it can survive a public hearing with the course still open. If it can't, that is the best argument yet for slowing down.
How it may affect me
The course closes Nov. 15, so local golfers will lose East Potomac's public tee times, and walkers and cyclists on the surrounding park may face construction disruption. The National Capital Planning Commission is expected to consider the redesign at a December meeting, and its meetings are public, so residents can watch and typically submit comment. The court case could still change the timeline.
