Trump Declares East Potomac Golf Course Work Starts “Immediately” After Calling Judge a “Crazed Lunatic”

A Monday post escalates a legal standoff

President Donald Trump declared on Monday that renovation work on Washington’s historic East Potomac Golf Links would begin “immediately”, according to Reuters, in open defiance of US District Judge Ana Reyes, whose court orders require the government to notify her before any substantive construction begins at the site.

In a Truth Social post on Monday morning, Trump called Reyes “a crazed lunatic”, described the court case as “ridiculous”, and insisted his administration had “an absolute right” to proceed with the project. “The experts at ‘Interior’ are allowed to do this First Class renovation ‘as of right.’ They do not need an approval. Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY!” he wrote, according to Reuters.

The Monday post was a sharp escalation from Sunday, when Trump had written on Truth Social that work on the course would begin on 15 November and that the revamped facility would reopen in about 15 months, promising to turn the 106-year-old public course into “one of the Best and Most Spectacular Golf Courses anywhere in the World”, Reuters reported. The president later added that the Interior Department, which oversees the golf course, “is very excited” about the renovation plans.

Reuters had reported on Sunday that it was unclear how the judge would respond to the announcement. By Monday morning, the answer was clear: she responded by hauling the administration into court.

The judge’s orders

Reyes ruled earlier this year that the government must give notice before undertaking any substantive construction work at East Potomac, Reuters reported. Last week, she issued an order halting the removal of trees at the site, calling the situation “inexcusable”.

The government had removed around 500 trees from the course on 10 October, according to Reuters, saying the work would improve safety at the park and restore its original design as part of a plan dating back to 2019 that predates Trump’s ambitions for the course. CNN, citing the court proceedings, put the number at more than 430 trees cut down without properly notifying the judge.

After Sunday’s Truth Social announcement, Reyes ordered the administration to explain whether it still maintained the position it had argued the previous week: that there was “no final agency action” regarding the course, and that at most “the President has given preliminary thought” to the renovations.

Then on Monday, according to CNN, the judge forced administration officials to testify and sought to highlight the apparent unwillingness of Justice Department lawyers to vouch for the administration’s claims in court. She was, in CNN’s words, raking the administration “over the coals”.

The lawsuit behind the fight

The legal battle began in February, when the DC Preservation League brought a lawsuit to halt the administration’s takeover of the golf course, alleging that it would violate environmental laws and “irreparably destroy a priceless piece of American history”, according to Reuters.

In a 9 October court filing, the Trump administration had asked Reyes to dismiss the litigation, saying it was premature because the “proposed project remains at an early and conceptual stage”. The following day, however, the government removed the trees. Reyes ordered a halt to the removals.

The administration has also moved to remove the judge from the case. On Friday, the government filed a motion to disqualify Reyes and move the case to another district judge, saying her actions had shown “deep-seated and unequivocal antipathy toward the Trump Administration”, according to court records cited by Reuters.

Responding to Reyes’s Sunday order demanding an explanation, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward wrote in a filing that any redesign of the golf course was not an “agency action” at all. “Just as a decision to redesign all the art exhibits in a Smithsonian Museum would not be agency action, neither would a decision to redesign a golf course, or to trim trees, replace fences, expand the fairways, or mow the lawn,” Woodward wrote, according to Reuters.

The East Potomac renovation is among a number of projects Trump is pursuing to reshape the White House and other Washington landmarks, Reuters reported.

A wider pattern of defied court orders

The golf-course standoff is the latest in a long series of confrontations between the administration and the federal courts. According to an Associated Press investigation in May, cited by CNN, district judges ruled that the administration had violated court orders in at least 31 lawsuits over 15 months, in addition to more than 250 other examples of noncompliance that judges found in immigration cases. The judges finding these violations are often Republican-nominated, CNN noted.

CNN’s Monday analysis recounted several of the most high-profile examples:

The government funding freeze. Weeks into Trump’s second term, a federal judge in Rhode Island found the administration had violated a court order by failing to un-freeze many of the federal grants it had blocked after he ordered it to do so. The judge opted not to hold the administration in contempt but issued a warning, quoting a 1975 Supreme Court ruling: “Persons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect.”

The Alien Enemies Act flights. US District Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to turn around planes deporting migrants to a prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, but the flights continued. Boasberg initiated contempt hearings, saying that “probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt”. After a lengthy process, two Trump-nominated judges on a divided appeals court ended the inquiry, calling it a “clear abuse of discretion”.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia. US District Judge Paula Xinis found “willful and intentional noncompliance” with her orders over the wrongful deportation of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, whom the administration later charged criminally and tried to deport again. He was eventually returned in June 2025, despite the administration having previously claimed it did not have the power to make that happen.

Third-country deportations. US District Judge Brian Murphy of Massachusetts said the administration’s rapid third-country deportations of migrants, despite his injunction, were “unquestionably violative of this court’s order”. He also accused the administration of manufacturing chaos and trying to evade court orders.

The immigration orders. Judges have found hundreds of instances of immigration authorities failing to comply with immigration-related court orders. Patrick Schiltz, the Republican-nominated chief US district judge in Minnesota, found more than 200 such instances and at one point summoned the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, threatening him with contempt — then cancelled the hearing after the agency complied with an order to release a wrongly detained man from Ecuador.

The media ban. Despite a court order blocking Trump from barring media outlets whose coverage he disliked, including CNN, from White House grounds, those journalists were initially unable to access the grounds. The access was later restored as the case proceeded, though the White House continued to block CNN from travelling on Air Force One on its assigned pool days.

Taxpayer-funded political ads. Despite a judge’s ruling that the administration had to cancel all future airings of Trump’s controversial taxpayer-funded political ads, the administration was slow to comply and the ads aired hundreds more times, CNN reported last week. A Justice Department lawyer apologised “to the court and the plaintiffs”, and no further legal action has been taken.

The young deportees. Trump-appointed US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Maryland found that ICE had wrongfully deported more than 50 unaccompanied minors who had blanket court orders barring their removal, and in a separate case twice wrongfully deported an asylum-seeker to El Salvador in violation of three court orders. According to Law360, these are the only two instances in which a judge has held the administration in contempt.

CNN also noted a whistleblower’s claim last year that a top Justice Department official explicitly spoke about the possible need to ignore court orders.

Analysis: Why It Matters

A golf course has become a constitutional stress test

The fight over East Potomac is, on its face, about landscaping at a leisure facility. But the legal question Reyes is policing is much larger: whether the executive branch can simply redefine its own obligations away. The administration’s argument — that redesigning a golf course is not an “agency action” and therefore not subject to the judge’s notice requirement — is an attempt to move the dispute outside the courtroom’s reach entirely. If trimming trees, replacing fences and expanding fairways at a federal facility are not agency actions, then a president could argue that very little of what the government does on public land qualifies either. That theory has implications far beyond one course in Washington, which is why this case is being watched well outside golf circles.

The tree timeline is the administration’s weakest point

Whatever the merits of the underlying environmental claims, the sequence of events is what has most visibly damaged the government’s credibility with the judge. On 9 October, the administration told Reyes the project was “at an early and conceptual stage” — so preliminary that litigation was premature. The next day, it felled hundreds of trees. That juxtaposition is why Reyes called the situation “inexcusable” and why she is now demanding sworn testimony rather than accepting written assurances. Courts can disagree about policy; what they rarely tolerate is the sense that they are being told one thing while another is being done. The Monday hearing, with DOJ lawyers reportedly unwilling to vouch for their own claims, suggests the judge is done giving the government the benefit of the doubt.

The disqualification motion is a high-risk gambit

Seeking to remove the judge is a legitimate procedural tool, but the language used — “deep-seated and unequivocal antipathy” — raises the temperature of the case while doing nothing to address the underlying notice requirement. Even if a new judge took over, the February lawsuit and the environmental claims would remain, and any successor would likely want the same answers about the tree removals. The motion reads less as a solution to the legal problem and more as an attempt to change the audience. And the timing — filed Friday, the same week hundreds of trees were cut down — makes it look like an attempt to outrun the consequences of the administration’s own actions rather than to answer them.

Accountability has been slow — and the administration seems to know it

The CNN and AP record is striking: at least 31 lawsuits with violation findings, more than 250 immigration noncompliance instances, and only two contempt rulings. Judges have repeatedly warned rather than punished — quoting the 1975 Supreme Court line about private determinations of the law, floating contempt, then stepping back. The administration’s conduct suggests it has learned the practical lesson of that pattern: open defiance, or simply slow compliance, carries little immediate cost. Trump’s Monday post, publicly declaring work will start “immediately” in defiance of an active court order, is the most explicit expression yet of that lesson. The question is whether Reyes’s insistence on live testimony signals a different phase of judicial patience running out — or merely another warning before the cycle repeats.

The judges are not the usual suspects

CNN made a point of noting that the judges finding violations are often Republican-nominated — and that Trump’s own appointee, Judge Gallagher, produced the only two contempt rulings. That detail matters because the administration’s public framing, including Trump’s “crazed lunatic” attack on Reyes, casts these disputes as political vendettas by hostile judges. The record shows a broader judicial consensus that spans the usual partisan lines, which makes the “antipathy” argument harder to sustain as an explanation for the whole pattern. If Reyes’s disqualification motion succeeds in moving the case, the next judge will inherit the same timeline, the same filings, and the same felled trees.

What to Watch Next

1. Whether work actually begins “immediately”. Trump’s Monday post set a test of his own making: if crews break ground at East Potomac, Reyes will have to decide whether that crosses the line into contempt of her notice order.
2. The disqualification motion. If Reyes is removed and the case moves to another judge, the new jurist’s first act will likely be the same demand for answers about the tree removals — with fresh eyes and no patience for the old explanations.
3. Whether Reyes initiates contempt proceedings. Only one judge has held the administration in contempt so far. If Reyes goes further than her peers, it could reset the cost-benefit calculation that has so far favoured defiance.
4. The underlying preservation lawsuit. Beyond the procedural fight, the DC Preservation League’s environmental and historic-preservation claims will eventually have to be decided on their merits — the 106-year-old course’s fate hangs on them.
5. The midterm backdrop. With congressional elections on 3 November two weeks away, the standoff feeds directly into the campaign narrative about executive power — and voters will be watching how it resolves.

Sources

• Reuters — “Trump says Washington golf course renovation to start in November, despite judge’s order” (18 October 2026)
• Reuters wire — “Trump Says Washington Golf Course Project to Start Immediately, Despite Judge’s Order” (19 October 2026)
• CNN — “The Trump team’s disdain for judicial orders is blowing up in court. Accountability has been slow in coming” (19 October 2026)
• Reuters via Devdiscourse — court orders and government response update (19 October 2026)
• GolfMagic — “Donald Trump announces major golf course overhaul despite judge’s order” (18 October 2026)