A Biden-appointed judge tore into Justice Department lawyers over rushed tree cutting at a historic D.C. golf course, telling them they had lost all credibility with the court.
Judge Ana Reyes held an emergency hearing Monday after crews began clearing trees at East Potomac Golf Links on Hains Point, a public course on national parkland in Washington, D.C. A government lawyer acknowledged roughly 430 trees had already come down.
Fox News reported that Reyes unloaded on administration attorneys over the timing of the notice and what she cast as a breakdown in basic communication with the court.
The fight sits at the center of a larger clash. President Donald Trump wants the aging public facility turned into a championship-caliber course. Preservationists say environmental and historic-preservation rules were not met. The administration says the cutting follows a 2019 National Park Service landscape-restoration plan that predates the redesign push.
Plaintiffs and the judge got word at 4:55 p.m. on a Friday of a holiday weekend that hundreds of trees were slated to be cut, with work set to start Saturday.
Reyes did not hide her anger about that sequence. Journalist Scott MacFarlane live-tweeted from the hearing and described the judge raising her voice at government counsel in a way he said he had not seen before.
Reyes told the lawyers:
"At 4:55pm on a Friday of a holiday weekend, the plaintiffs and I get [little] notice that hundreds of trees are going to be chopped down,"
When counsel said the government had learned of the operation around Oct. 8 or 9 and was still waiting on details, she pressed harder.
Reyes asked:
"Do you have email or a cell phone?"
Then came the line that framed the session. She told the attorneys they had forfeited the court’s trust.
Reyes said:
"You've lost credibility!"
Reporting carried in the same account said she spent about 15 minutes dressing down federal counsel.
Before the Monday session, Reyes moved to stop the damage from spreading. The Washington Examiner reported she issued a minute order directing the Trump administration to halt any further tree removal at the course until Tuesday at 7 a.m., ahead of a 10 a.m. hearing.
The National Park Service had already started taking down hundreds of trees on Saturday at East Potomac Golf Links. Historic-preservation challengers are fighting renovation plans tied to the administration’s redesign goals for the course.
East Potomac sits on an island linked to the city near the Jefferson Memorial and the Francis Case Bridge. It is national parkland, which is why the notice fight and the 2019 landscape plan matter as much as the golf dispute itself.
Government lawyers did not treat the cutting as a freestanding Trump vanity project. They told the court the removals carry out a National Park Service landscape-restoration plan from 2019, separate from the president’s later push for a top-tier public course.
Trump has said he wants the historic public facility brought up to the standard of championship courses he knows in the United States, Ireland, and Scotland. Preservationists answered with environmental and historic-preservation claims and got the emergency audience they wanted.
Norm Eisen, the former Obama ethics lawyer tied to the Democracy Defenders Fund, marked the emergency setting as a win. The group’s posture has been described as organized legal resistance to the president. Eisen posted a victory-lap message Monday after the court agreed to hear the dispute on that fast track.
Reyes is a Biden nominee, confirmed after a 2023 nomination. She was born in Uruguay. She has tangled with Trump-era positions before, which is why this hearing landed with extra political weight.
The Trump Justice Department previously filed a formal misconduct complaint accusing her of bias. In earlier transgender military service litigation, she grilled an attorney with a religious hypo, asking how Jesus Christ would respond to “telling a group of people that they are so worthless, so worthless that we’re not going to allow them into homeless shelters?”
In another matter, she labeled an order “biologically inaccurate.” In a 2025 inspectors general case, she found that Trump violated federal notice requirements when he fired several inspectors general, then declined to put them back in their jobs.
None of that history decides whether a 2019 park plan authorizes tree work on Hains Point. It does explain why a credibility blast from this bench, over holiday-weekend notice and hundreds of trees already on the ground, became an instant flashpoint.
By Monday, about 430 trees were already gone. The court had frozen further cutting into Tuesday morning. The administration still points to the 2019 National Park Service plan. Challengers still say process and preservation rules were short-circuited. The redesign ambition for a championship-level public course remains the political backdrop.
Open questions remain the full case caption, the complete text of the 2019 plan as applied on the ground, how many trees were slated in total, and what lasting order follows the emergency pause. Those details will decide whether this was routine park maintenance done clumsily, or a rushed clearance that outran the law.
When a federal judge says the government’s lawyers have lost credibility over trees falling on national parkland with barely a Friday-night heads-up, taxpayers are entitled to a straight process, not a scramble after the chainsaws start.
