Trump Tees Off On Golf Course Injunction Hours After It’s Issued

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued a 70-page preliminary injunction in the fight over the East Potomac Golf Course. It bars the Trump administration from removing or damaging any more trees, and requires 10 business days’ written notice before the government makes “any irreparable modification to any forms or features of East Potomac Park” while the case proceeds. Shortly before midnight, President Donald Trump logged on to Truth Social to let everyone know how that was going to go.

“We are closing the East Potomac Golf Course Site as scheduled on November 15th in order to renovate and rebuild for Competitive (with other such projects!), Safety, Modernization, and Aesthetic reasons,” the president wrote, as The Hill reported. He also wrote, “The judge has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project.”

As scheduled… hours after a federal court made clear that the schedule now runs through the courthouse. Deepest of sighs.

He also said the administration is “asking the D.C. Circuit Court for immediate remedy,” and appealing an order you don’t like is exactly how the system is supposed to work. Announcing before the appeals court has even seen the case that the date isn’t moving and the judge has “absolutely no right” to weigh in is not.

Trump went on to call the notice requirement “time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional,” which is a lot of adjectives for “we don’t plan to tell the court what we’re doing.” Which… happens to be the exact behavior that got us here. In October, the Interior Department ordered, considered, and approved a plan to remove hundreds of trees in five days, and had bulldozers on site the next morning.

This administration has made a hobby of disrespecting judges and the rule of law. But the President of the United States taking to social media to announce that a court order won’t change the government’s plans is bold, even for them.

It also blows up his own lawyers’ case. Again. The Justice Department has spent this litigation insisting there’s no final plan to rebuild the course, that, at most, the president has given it some preliminary thought, while the president kept posting the plan, the architect, and the closing date. Reyes noticed. Her opinion included screenshots of the posts and contained this line:

Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President.

The DOJ’s litigation strategy, in other words, has been “please disregard my client,” and the client has responded by posting through it. Last week, the DOJ lawyers would show up for the golf course case but balked at signing the brief, and the plaintiffs had to file a notice letting Reyes know the president had called her a “crazed lunatic” before breakfast.

This time he didn’t even wait for morning.

Reyes also took on the government’s argument that the injunction infringes on presidential authority, pointing out that the order runs against the Interior Department and the National Park Service, not Trump himself:

“Separation of powers” is not a talismanic incantation that permits the Executive to run amok, unchecked. … One branch may not shield itself from accountability merely by invoking separation of powers principles without any reasoning. But that is all the Government has done.

That was written before the midnight post, but it reads like a response to it.

The order asks for 10 business days’ warning before the bulldozers come back, and the president answered by giving the whole country three weeks’ warning that he doesn’t think the order applies to him, which, if nothing else, is the most advance notice anyone in this case has gotten from the government yet.

Earlier: Golf Course Plaintiffs Give Judge Reyes A Heads-Up: The President Called You Insane Before Breakfast
DOJ Lawyers Will Show Up For The Golf Course Case But Signing The Brief Is Another Matter Entirely
DOJ Demands Judge Recuse Herself For Inappropriate Noticing They Broke The Law
‘You Did Your Absolute Worst’: Judge Delivers Epic Benchslap Over Trump Golf Course Chainsaw Spree
Ballroom Blitz Blocked