Trump Sets a Start Date for His D.C. Golf Course. His Lawyers Tell a Judge There Is No Plan.

A federal judge in Washington will put senior Interior Department officials under oath Monday in a fight over a public golf course President Donald Trump wants to rebuild. The hearing comes one day after the president announced a start date for the work, and one day after his own Justice Department told the court there is still no final plan.

The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.

What Trump announced Sunday

On Truth Social Sunday, Trump said the Interior Department had worked with golf course architect Tom Fazio on "a plan to build a World Class Championship Golf Course on the site of the current East Potomac Golf Links," NBC News reported. He said the course would be open to the public and able to host events such as the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup. Work would begin Nov. 15 and take about 15 months. He called the current course "old, broken, dilapidated, and of no further use or effect."

The National Park Service oversees the course. A preservation group, the D.C. Preservation League, and two golfers have sued to challenge the redevelopment, CBS News reported.

The judge asks a simple question

After the post, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered the administration to say whether it still argues that there is no "final agency action" and that the plan is only "preliminary." That matters because courts generally review final government decisions, not ideas.

The Justice Department answered Sunday night that there is, indeed, no final action and the plans are preliminary, according to NBC. "Just as a decision to redesign all the art exhibits in a Smithsonian Museum would not be agency action, neither would a decision to redesign a golf course, or to trim trees, replace fences, expand the fairways, or mow the lawn," Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward wrote.

How the trees came down

The case turned sharp earlier this month. Government lawyers told the court in a filing just before 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 9, that the National Park Service would start clearing trees the next morning, CBS reported. Crews cut down 430 trees that Saturday.

The administration said the work carried out recommendations from a 2019 Cultural Landscape Report meant to restore the course, which opened in the 1920s, closer to its original links-style design with fewer trees. But Kevin Griess, superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, testified that the felled trees were not identified as hazardous, and he and another park official said there was no urgency to cut them that weekend, according to CBS. The plaintiffs argue the administration is breaking a big project into small pieces to skip environmental review.

Reyes had earlier declined to block the project because government lawyers promised ample notice of large-scale work. After the trees fell, she told them she was "furious." "I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done," she said, adding that it "cost the government all of its credibility," NBC reported. She barred any more tree cutting through Oct. 26 and ordered three business days' notice before any "irreparable modification" to the course.

On Friday, the administration asked Reyes, a Biden appointee, to step aside, arguing her "histrionics in prior hearings" show she is no longer impartial. Monday, she has called the acting director of the National Park Service and the Interior Department's chief of staff to testify under oath, and she has ordered Woodward to attend.

Fights over Washington's public landmarks have come up more than once this fall. Dock Line has also covered the Army's plan to return the Confederate Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery.

Opinion: Say what you mean to the court

There is nothing wrong with a president wanting a better public golf course in the nation's capital. Plenty of conservatives would cheer a first-class course that ordinary people can still play. Reyes herself said at a hearing last month, "I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees. I am a judge," NBC reported. The administration is also free to argue that she has lost her objectivity.

But the government cannot have it both ways. The president says the plan is done and the shovels move Nov. 15. His lawyers tell a federal judge, the same day, that there is no plan to review. And earlier this month, lawyers who had promised notice gave the court a few hours on a Friday evening before 430 trees came down, trees the park's own superintendent said were not hazardous.

Jesus put it plainly: "Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil" (Matthew 5:37). That standard applies to Justice Department lawyers as much as anyone. When the government's word to a court means nothing, every citizen who ever stands before a judge loses something.

Monday's hearing is the administration's chance to clear this up. The honest answer is simple: either there is a plan, and it should be reviewed like any other, or there is not, and the president should stop announcing start dates.