The legal battle over the future of East Potomac Golf Links is set to proceed Monday. But President Donald Trump added a new wrinkle on Sunday, asserting on Truth Social that his deliberate renovation of the historic muni would start Nov. 15, closing the course for 15 months. Trump said he and architect Tom Fazio had “developed a plan” that would permit the course to host main championships, Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups.
Trump also posted a rendering of the proposed adjustments, which bears little resemblance to the present course. The design exhibits a dramatically remade Hains Point, the peninsula where East Potomac sits, with a single 18-hole golf course stretching from shoreline to shoreline. It also differs considerably from the more modest proposal that was put forth earlier this 12 months, eliminating Ohio Drive, a century-old grove of cherry trees and a famend miniature golf course. The adjustments would reshape a public leisure space used by golfers, walkers,, cyclists, chicken watchers and others.
This announcement could determine prominently in Monday’s court proceedings. In July, a choose ordered the administration to current her with any long-term plans to overhaul the course and to keep away from shock reworking initiatives, as occurred with the East Wing of the White House and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
But last weekend, the Interior Department did just that, eradicating over 400 trees at East Potomac and giving the court and a group suing to stop the change less than a day to reply. During a four-hour listening to last Monday, Judge Ana C. Reyes excoriated the Justice Department for failing to keep her apprised of the authorities’s plans. She accused the authorities of “double-speak” for claiming in court that the tree elimination was half of long-planned upkeep, and said that officers had finished “their absolute worst” to notify the court. Reyes spent much of the listening to making an attempt to set up who gave the go-ahead for the shock tree elimination. That is expected to be the focus of Monday, when two Trump administration officers, Gregory Wischer of Interior Department and Jessica Bowron, appearing director of the National Park Service, have been ordered to testify. Reyes also ordered the authorities not to take away any more trees until Oct. 26 to give the group opposing the plan time to reply.
Trump’s post could complicate the authorities’s place. Shortly after it appeared, Judge Reyes demanded that the authorities’s attorneys clarify by Sunday night why they had testified on Friday that “at most … the President has given preliminary thought” to any plan to remake the golf course.
Groups opposing Trump’s deliberate renovation argue that the course gives an reasonably priced, accessible option for gamers in the Washington, D.C., metro space. They contend that the overhaul would raise greens charges and scale back tee time availability, pricing out some regulars. Critics also query whether the website could deal with the visitors and infrastructure calls for of skilled tournaments.
President Trump’s {golfing} roots at middle of East Potomac controversy
In his post, Trump called East Potomac “old, broken, dilapidated, and of no further use or effect,” including that it was “completely overgrown, dysfunctional, and unsafe.” Yet according to the National Trust Links, which operates East Potomac, the course hosted 124,500 rounds in 2025, making it the busiest in the Washington, D.C. space.
Golf has been performed on the Hains Point peninsula for 124 years. The facility presently consists of an 18-hole Blue course, a 9-hole White course, a nine-hole Par 3 Red Course, a two-tiered driving vary, apply areas and a clubhouse. Trump’s deliberate format would scale back it to one 18-hole course, with a new clubhouse, a massive driving vary, and a apply space. The rendering would not embrace the mini-golf course or the famed grove of Japanese cherry trees, half of a present of more than 3,000 trees from Japan to Washington in 1912.
Trump had beforehand said renovations at the century-plus-old Blue Course at East Potomac Golf Links would start on Sept. 1, but that deadline handed without work beginning. Now he has set a new date set for a sweeping overhaul, even as the combat over the property’s future continues.
“East Potomac Park is a national park, golf course and recreational facility that is meant for everyone to enjoy,” Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which represents the group difficult the plan, said in a assertion. “Our litigation is intended to protect this community jewel for the people and communities it serves.”
The next listening to is Monday.
The post As legal battle rages on, President Trump units new date to renovate beloved D.C. muni appeared first on Golf.
Source hyperlink
