Shortly before midnight on Monday, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to assert his intention to proceed with a controversial golf course renovation despite a federal court order issued earlier that day.
The president declared that East Potomac Golf Course would close as planned, citing renovation goals including competitive upgrades, safety improvements, modernisation, and aesthetic changes.
In his post, as reported by The Hill, Trump wrote: “We are closing the East Potomac Golf Course Site as scheduled on November 15th in order to renovate and rebuild for Competitive (with other such projects!), Safety, Modernization, and Aesthetic reasons.”
The defiant message arrived within hours of a significant legal setback, when U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued a 70-page preliminary injunction directly targeting the administration’s plans for the site.
That injunction prohibits the Trump administration from removing or causing damage to any further trees at East Potomac Park while the underlying legal case continues.
Beyond the tree protection measure, the court order also mandates at least 10 business days of written notice before the government undertakes “any irreparable modification to any forms or features of East Potomac Park.”
The breadth and length of the ruling, spanning 70 pages, signals the seriousness with which Judge Reyes is treating the dispute over one of Washington’s most prominent public green spaces.
Trump showed no sign of viewing the court’s authority as a constraint, attacking the ruling directly in the same late-night post on his social media platform.
He wrote: “The judge has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project.”
The confrontation sets up a direct clash between the executive branch’s stated timeline and a federal court order that explicitly governs the pace of any changes to the park.
Legal challenges to unilateral government modifications of federally managed public land have intensified during Trump’s second term, with courts increasingly issuing injunctive relief to slow executive action.
Whether the administration proceeds with its November 15 closure date or complies with the court’s notice requirements is now a central question for the case moving forward.