Trump DOJ playbook for bulldozing president's challengers in court appears to be in full swing for 'builder-in-chief,' lawsuit says

After President Donald Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom, his administration “illegally dumped toxic debris” on East Potomac Golf Course to “quickly and overtly” and unlawfully create a “championship-style course,” two golfers and a historic preservation group freshly allege.

The amended and supplemental complaint that plaintiffs the D.C. Preservation League, Dave Roberts, and Alex Dickson filed on Friday claimed that the Department of the Interior, Secretary Doug Burgum, and the National Park Service, in fact, “adopted and began implementing the Washington National plan” at the tail-end of 2025, and that this “portends the destruction of a cultural landscape that has been maintained consistent with its historic design for more than a century.”

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes last noted in the case that she “received countless emails and voicemails” from people “upset” that the administration was removing trees from the golf course, including a cherry tree. Among those concerned were the plaintiffs, who claimed the tree removal was evidence the larger plan — beyond routine maintenance operations — was in motion.

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And so, they asked Reyes to “require” that the Trump administration “give notice to the Court and Plaintiffs within 24 hours after Defendants’ completion or decision to forgo” various “legal compliance steps” before they “break ground on the overhaul of East Potomac Golf Course.”

As Burgum and the White House have referred to Trump as the “builder-in-chief,” multiple lawsuits have sought to block various projects from proceeding based on alleged harms.

Vietnam War veterans suing to stop a “Great Triumphal Arch” from being built at Memorial Circle recently convinced a judge to require 48 hours’ notice before construction. And while the Kennedy Center’s fate remains an open question, another judge ordered a 30-day notice requirement before any “demolition.”

Regarding the golf course, the DOJ has said there is no “final agency action” for Reyes to block and no standing for these plaintiffs to sue over “offense, disagreement, or distaste” after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ballroom decision.

Reyes declined to immediately issue a comparable notice requirement, but she did allow the plaintiffs an opportunity to update their “outdated” complaint to shore up “standing.”

The D.C. Preservation League’s attorneys Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen attempted to so on Friday by focusing on the environmental implications of dumped “toxic debris.”

“Defendants’ adoption and implementation of the Washington National plan is a final agency action subject to review under the Administrative Procedure Act,” and so is the “dumping and storage of dirt and debris from the East Wing destruction project,” the complaint said, alleging violations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).

These are “ongoing concrete injuries,” the plaintiffs added, asking Reyes to act before it’s too late.

When Chief Justice John Roberts led a dissent saying that Trump’s ballroom project was “likely unlawful,” he specifically wondered what the implications of the decision would be for environmental law.

“And if a standalone concrete and particularized aesthetic injury can be recast as mere offense, what made the environmental plaintiffs with standing in our prior cases different from [architectural historian Alison] Hoagland?” Roberts asked. “What saved their aesthetic injuries from being classed as mere distaste for the actions of government or private industry?”

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