法官暂时叫停特朗普改造华盛顿市立高尔夫球场的计划Judge temporarily blocks Trump’s push to overhaul municipal golf course in D.C.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration late Saturday from closing a Washington golf course that President Donald Trump is seeking to transform into a championship-style setup.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes came a day after she held a lengthy, contentious hearing and the day before the Trump administration had planned to close the course for renovations.

Reyes heard arguments Friday for six hours, just one week after the plaintiffs — a historic preservation group and two local golfers — asked her to immediately block the administration’s plan. They have argued that the National Park Service is closing the park at Trump’s direction as part of his plan to completely transform the course.

Throughout the fiery hearing, Reyes pressed the government on its plans to abruptly close the course, and specifically for the reason for a sudden urgency to do so on Nov. 15 — the same date Trump had publicly targeted to begin renovations.

“So it’s just a coincidence that all these things are happening on Nov. 15?”Reyes asked the government.

During the hearing, the administration argued the closure is separate from Trump’s plans for the course. Lawyers from the Department of Justice argued the park must be closed because the sea wall is crumbling into the Potomac River and poses a safety hazard.

Reyes seemed unpersuaded, saying there had been no previous mention of safety issues until now, with the government saying there are life-threatening safety issues. In her ruling, she called those explanations pretexts but said that wasn’t enough to pause the work.

Instead, she leaned on what she called the likelihood that the administration had skipped the required environmental review and public comment period.

“In its haste to meet an arbitrary deadline, the Government has likely violated at least the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act,” Reyes wrote in her order, which halts work through Nov. 28.

Throughout the hearing, Reyes tried to understand whether the planned closure was a result of direct pressure from Trump.

The lawyer representing the Trump administration, Adam R. F. Gustafson, said Trump has made it a priority to beautify D.C. in consideration of the public interest.

“Do you think a single voter went to the polls and said, ‘I’m going to elect the President of the United States so that he can redo the municipal golf course in D.C.?’”Reyes snapped back.

The government also argued that the course must close because there is no one to operate it. The Trump administration recently terminated the lease with the National Links Trust, which had been operating this course in addition to two other public courses in the district it still operates.

“What do I do if I make a finding that the course didn’t close because the National Links Trust was ended, but it was ended so there was an excuse to close the course?”Reyes asked.

In Saturday’s order, Reyes did not mandate that the administration take over operating the course, but said it must remain open.

Democracy Forward senior legal advisor Catherine Carroll, who represents the plaintiffs, welcomed the ruling.

“We are grateful that once again, a court has intervened to prevent irreparable harm caused by the Trump-Vance administration’s pursuit of another one of the president’s vanity projects,” Carroll told MS NOW. “The administration’s inexplicable drive to destroy East Potomac Park would have taken away a treasured park that could never be replaced, and we are honored to work with this coalition to secure this temporary relief.”

A Justice Department spokesperson pointed to one argument the DOJ maintains Reyes hasn’t rejected: “The Court has acknowledged that the National Park Service can limit access to its facilities where the public is at risk of harm,” the spokesperson said. “Nothing in the Court’s order precludes planning for the development of a world class golf course to continue.”

Friday’s hearing was the latest round in a case that Reyes herself has said “has become much more” than “a case about golf.”Last week, Reyes said she intends to appoint Jessie Liu, a former U.S. attorney for D.C., as a special master in the case to investigate whether the government has committed misconduct. Liu previously served in the Department of Justice during the first Trump administration and managed high-profile prosecutions, including against Trump ally Roger Stone and other investigations, including the one into former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Reyes gave both the plaintiffs and the government the opportunity to oppose Liu’s appointment ahead of Friday’s hearing. In a filing just ahead of the hearing, the government said there was “no reasonable basis” for the court to appoint a special master to conduct an ethics inquiry in this case At the end of the hearing, Reyes announced her intention to move forward with the ethics probe.

“Based on everything that I have seen,” Reyes said, “There is no question in my mind that this has to be investigated in some way.”The legal fight over the closure of the East Potomac Golf Course reached a boiling point last month when the Trump administration abruptly cut trees down on the course, defying the judge’s request to notify her of any plans for major tree removal on the golf course.

Reyes held an emergency hearing over the cutting down of the trees on a federal holiday, saying during the hearing that she was “beyond disappointed in the government.”She then blocked the government from removing even a single tree from the course and ordered them to provide notice before closing or making any irreversible changes to the court.

The Trump administration appealed that ruling. That appeal remains pending before the D.C. Circuit.

The president has said that his plans are to close the course for renovation and turn it into a championship-style golf course.

Trump previously posted on Truth Social that the closure of the course would occur on Nov. 15, despite comments from Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and other lawyers that there is no final plan to close and renovate the course.

Proceedings over the closure of the East Potomac Golf Course have grown increasingly fiery as Reyes has grown frustrated with the apparent disconnect between the president’s public statements and the statements made by Justice Department attorneys in her courtroom. That disconnect has prompted Reyes to call top DOJ officials to answer questions and to open an ethics investigation into the DOJ’s conduct in this case.

At the beginning of Friday’s hearing, in response to a report that the Department of Interior had destroyed documents related to Trump’s construction projects, Reyes issued a stern warning, telling the DOJ lawyers “in less than a zepto-second” there would be “serious consequences” if she learned a single document had been intentionally destroyed.

In a telling moment later on, Gustafson told Reyes he assumed the government was entitled to the presumption of regularity. “Well, you may want to move on from that point,” Reyes snapped back.