President Trump vowed to hold U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes fully responsible for anyone hurt or killed on East Potomac Golf Links, calling the blocked federal course a dangerous national disgrace.
In a lengthy Truth Social post late Wednesday, President Trump said the 36-hole course about two miles from the White House is so run-down that it endangers golfers and should be shut at once for safety. He named U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes, a Joe Biden appointee, as the official who will answer if anyone is hurt or killed there while her orders keep major repairs on ice.
The fight centers on East Potomac Golf Links, a federal course on a man-made peninsula in the Potomac River. Trump wants it rebuilt as an 18-hole championship layout. Reyes has repeatedly restricted tree removal and other irreversible work after a lawsuit by the DC Preservation League and other plaintiffs.
The New York Post reported that Trump framed the standoff in blunt safety terms, not abstract process. He said the course is “highly dangerous, dilapidated, and absolutely disgusting,” and that the public should not wait on more delay while hazards stay in place.
Trump’s post walked through conditions he said make the driving range and course unsafe. He pointed to torn netting, a failing building, exposed nails, and flying balls that have already struck at least one person tied to the White House.
He wrote:
"We will hold the judge, Ana C. Reyes, fully responsible for anybody who is hurt, or killed, on this very dangerous, dilapidated, and unsightly Golf Course,"
Trump said the protective netting is not doing its job.
"The gaping holes in the driving range’s ‘protective’ netting are highly hazardous,"
He added that balls tear through those gaps at high speed and hit people who never saw them coming, “including a White House staffer who was, sadly, hit violently in the chest.” He also said the driving-range building is falling apart, its structure is weak, and exposed nails and rotting wood threaten younger players. “It should be closed immediately for safety reasons,” he wrote. “Not a good situation!”
In Trump’s account, the range should offer clean views of the Washington Monument, not a debris field. “The driving range should NOT be a threat to life and limb,” he said. “The current condition of the golf course is a National Disgrace.”
No death on the course is reported in the available accounts. The injury claim rests on Trump’s description of the unnamed staffer struck in the chest.
Trump’s team has moved to overhaul the property with noted architect Tom Fazio. On Oct. 18, the president rolled out the new design and said East Potomac would close for 15 months of renovations beginning Nov. 15. The goal is a modern championship-style course in place of the aging 36-hole complex.
Plaintiffs warned that the plans would wipe out biking and running trails on the property. Reyes stepped in earlier with limits on what the administration could touch.
In May, she ordered the Trump administration to give notice before cutting more than 10 trees. She also barred the government from taking down trees or making any “irreparable modification” without clearing her process. On Oct. 9, just before the close of business on the Friday ahead of the Columbus Day weekend, the White House told the court it planned to cut “up to 529 trees.” Crews then moved fast and took down hundreds.
Reyes answered with an emergency hearing and a wider block on construction work. After a hearing this past Monday, she extended that block again.
The Washington Examiner reported that Reyes issued a preliminary injunction on Monday barring further tree removal at East Potomac Golf Links. She found the administration likely violated federal environmental law by cutting trees without the environmental review the renovation plan required, as the plaintiffs had argued.
That order does more than pause landscaping. It locks in place the same conditions Trump calls hazardous while the case grinds on, netting gaps, a shaky range building, and a course he says should not stay open in its present state.
Separate reporting put the tree count already removed at roughly 430 under National Park Service work, the wave of cutting that first triggered Reyes’s temporary restraining order against more removals.
The legal fight has turned raw inside the courtroom as well as online. Fox News reported that after a nearly seven-hour hearing, Reyes abruptly withdrew a Rule 11 demand that Justice Department lawyers refile a brief and identify who signed Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward’s filing.
“Late breaking news, I'm going to withdraw request that DOJ refile yesterday's brief with identification of who signed it. we've all got better things to spend our time on,” Reyes said.
Trump has not soft-pedaled his view of the bench. He has publicly branded the judge in harsh terms and said work to turn the site into a world-class championship course would begin Nov. 15 under Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Fazio. Fox News also noted his earlier line that the judge on the case is a “crazed lunatic” whose courthouse tapes, he claimed, may show she is unwell, language that raised the temperature without changing the paper orders still blocking the job.
Breitbart reported a further clash: Reyes ordered Woodward back to court to confirm that prior DOJ statements, that there were no plans to close the course, still held, even as Trump said the opposite in public. Her lengthy ruling concluded the administration likely broke environmental law by tearing down hundreds of trees at the historic D.C. course.
In that opinion she wrote, “Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President.” Trump, for his part, posted that the course will close Nov. 15 as scheduled and that Reyes “does not have the Constitutional Right to ‘ask for or receive notices,’ which are time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional.”
Strip away the filings and the core dispute is simple. The administration says a federal golf course two miles from the White House is a dump, dangerous nets, failing structures, debris, and at least one violent ball strike on a staffer, and that a Fazio redesign and a 15-month closure starting mid-November are the fix. The DC Preservation League and fellow plaintiffs say the same project would erase trails and was pushed ahead without proper environmental review. Reyes has sided with process limits, notice rules, and now a preliminary injunction.
Trump’s Wednesday blast puts a human stake on that paperwork. If someone is hurt or killed while the course sits in the shape he described, he said, the judge who kept the rebuild bottled up will own it. That is a political and moral claim, not a verdict. What the record does show is a president advertising specific hazards, a court blocking further irreversible work, hundreds of trees already down, and a renovation calendar the White House still treats as live.
Young golfers, weekend players, and staff who walk that range do not live in docket text. They live with whatever netting, boards, and open flight paths are actually there while adults in robes and suits argue about notices and reviews.
When a crumbling public course stays stuck in court, the people who pay the price are the ones standing under the torn net, not the lawyers who filed the last brief.
