It's not about golf: Trump's latest defiance exposes an 'extraordinary' assault

U.S. President Donald Trump walks on the grounds of the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, U.S., August 30, 2025

The “searing” decision on Monday of Judge Ana C. Reyes to block Donald Trump’s Interior Department from further development of a championship-level golf course on public land in Washington is no more about golf than it is about fondue recipes.

Of course, Trump’s lengthy harangue on Truth Social in response had nothing to do with golf, either, though Trump went on and on about the judge’s lack of experience or knowledge about golf courses.

No, these were our most recent public debates about presidential power and about whether Trump even understands the position of Law as the basis for a democratic society. He sees himself as omnipotent and the person who is supposed to tell the rest of us how to live our lives without challenge or question.

Indeed, Trump is insisting that his plan to redevelop East Potomac Park and renovate the public golf course there will be carried out as scheduled despite an order from the judge halting future work at the site. ”We are closing the East Potomac Golf Course Site as scheduled” on Nov. 15, adding that the judge “does not have the Constitutional Right to ‘ask for or receive notices,’ which are time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional.”

Stand by for some kind of contempt or court finding if Trump moves ahead.

Sometimes it is the strange cases that make the clearest point. The consistent failure of the Trump administration even to tell the judge the truth about knocking down more than 400 trees on federal parkland when she had an order in place demanding prior approval of next-steps in development tells us everything about Trump’s total disregard for even the place that courts are supposed to hold in a democracy.

The saddest truth is that Trump actually cares about golf but acts the same way in this case as he does in cases involving abridgment of immigrant rights or in summarily dismissing decades of environmental or health research and legislation.

Power for Its Own Sake

The power-mad Trump is so enwrapped in his “I can do anything I want” as president thinking that he cannot see the putting green for the downed trees in a court of law.

Judge Reyes likely has no substantive opinion about golf course design or their needs, but she has a credible case of what to do with being lied to in open court by Justice Department lawyers who are either incompetent or arrive at court with a muffle over their ears and mouth to keep them from finding out what their clients at the White House or Interior have in mind.

In court and in her 70-page decision extending a temporary injunction on work at the park, Judge Reyes “marveled that a local dispute over a golf course had spiraled into a broader examination of the Trump administration’s tactics, requiring judges to anticipate when and where the federal government might abruptly move to carry out the president’s personal goals and projects,” as The Times called it.

“It now forces the court to reconcile assertions by President Donald J. Trump with the sworn testimony of multiple government employees and the argument of senior Department of Justice attorneys,” she wrote. “This morass of different accounts concerns the future of the East Potomac Golf Course, a historic landmark.”

After berating Justice lawyers for willfully ignoring her previous orders, the judge demanded 10 days’ notice before any “irreversible modification” is made in the park, whether involving more felled trees, or change in pathways, structures, hydrology or even the staging of heavy equipment. The lawsuit was filed by residents and a preservation society, who want the park and its current golf course left alone.

Trump, of course, wants the championship golf course that is the equivalent of his gilt-laden Oval Office, and his arguments ignore the law to talk about the wonders of course design and the problems of a “aging” public golf course. I suppose we are lucky he is not arguing that beneath the third tee, there will be no military counterintelligence machinery.

“The events surrounding this case have become extraordinary,” the judge wrote. “The legal result is not.”

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

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