Trump admin cut down 430 trees at DC golf course renovation site, court docs confirm

This week, Snopes received emails and searches from readers asking if U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration chopped down 430 trees last weekend at East Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., the same site where Trump planned to renovate the East Potomac Golf Links property.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration revealed visual plans to overhaul the property into a championship-style golf course. Then, Trump announced on Truth Social that work on the golf course would begin in September. The DC Preservation League filed a lawsuit challenging the project, with District Court Judge Ana Reyes presiding over the case.

One reader asked us via email, “Did the Trump administration order removal of 430 trees from the East Potomac Golf Links?” People shared the claim on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Threads (archived) and other social media platforms.

In sum, the claim that the Trump administration cut down and planned the removal of 430 trees from the same park where planned golf course renovations will take place is true. 

A memorandum opinion that Reyes authored on Tuesday, in which she granted an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order in the DC Preservation League’s case against the Interior Department, confirmed the tree cutting was taking place. That order blocked the Trump administration from continuing the work for two weeks, through Oct. 26.

Reyes’ opinion, arriving one day after an emergency hearing on Monday, specifically mentioned the suddenness of crews cutting down 430 “healthy, non-invasive” trees, with the government only notifying the court minutes prior to close of business on a holiday weekend. She also noted the Trump administration argued the removals aligned with recommendations in a 2019 National Park Service report, leading Reyes to write she was “skeptical” of the timing. More about that report appears later in this article.

Snopes’ email correspondence with the Interior Department, in which a department spokesperson appeared to indirectly acknowledge that crews cut down hundreds of trees with no reasonable notice to the court, also appears later in this article. We emailed the park service, an agency the Interior Department oversees, and the White House, as well as the DC Preservation League to ask for additional documentation and a statement, and will update this article if we receive further information.

430 trees cut down with very little notice

Reyes’ opinion, handed down on Tuesday, laid out the timeline of events: 

• Tree-cutting plans began internally within the Interior Department at least early last week.
• The government provided unreasonable notice to the court (at 4:55 p.m. last Friday) of its plans to remove “up to 529 trees” to restore the golf course’s “historic links-style character.”
• Tree-cutting work began 15 hours later at 8 a.m. on Saturday.
• An emergency hearing occurred the following Monday — on Columbus Day, a federal holiday.

During the Monday hearing, Reyes reportedly said she was “furious” that the government told the court they knew of the tree-cutting plans at least days earlier than they notified the court. In May, she told the government she wanted to receive notice if crews planned to remove more than 10 trees, the Associated Press reported.

An NBC4 Washington journalist reported, “In all of my years of covering court proceedings, I have never seen a judge so angry,” adding Reyes was “raising her voice” at government attorneys.

Reyes wrote in the opinion:

The Government then did precisely what Plaintiffs feared. Sometime between the September 3 hearing and October 2, plans moved from removing only hazardous, dead, dying, or invasive trees to removing hundreds of healthy, non-invasive trees. And then it removed them without providing meaningful notice to Plaintiffs or the Court.

Reyes wrote that Trump administration lawyers said the Interior Department “ordered, considered and approved” a plan for the park service to oversee the cutting down of hundreds of trees, as well as that the government said it knew of no reason for any urgency to complete the work. She said the administration acknowledged in court that crews cut down 430 nonhazardous trees, adding that “about 300 additional trees are on the literal chopping block” but weren’t yet fallen thanks to a “rain delay.” (A tally of well over 700 targeted trees exceeded the “up to 529 trees” part of the notice Reyes said the government provided.)

Journalists live-posting from Reyes’ courtroom on Monday documented the administration’s mention of chopping down 430 nonhazardous trees and planning to cut 299 more — out of the park’s roughly 3,800 total trees.

We emailed Riverbend Tree Service in Virginia, a company with crews that appeared in a local news video report, to ask if its workers were present and when they first learned of the job, among other questions, and will update this story should we receive details.

Interior Department response, 2019 plans

In an email to Snopes, an Interior Department spokesperson chided Reyes for her involvement with the case and didn’t directly respond to our request to confirm the department ordered and approved the removal of hundreds of trees with very little notice. The email appeared to only indirectly confirm the tree-removal work.

The department spokesperson described the current state of the golf course as “riddled with garbage and choked by overgrown trees” and that “the work carries out a plan, seven years in the making, to address tree overgrowth” at the park.

Reyes wrote that the government claimed the tree-cutting work, referenced as a Tree Management Plan (TMP), applied to a Cultural Landscape Report the park service authored during Trump’s first term in 2019, and had “nothing to do with” Trump’s golf course plans. She continued, “The Court is skeptical,” and wrote:

The Government claims that the TMP implements a 2019 Cultural Landscape Report and has nothing to do with the Washington National Plan. It is a coincidence, the Government seems to suggest, that DOI cut down hundreds of trees at the Course weeks after the President asked DOI to cut down trees at the Course, and not, say, any other time in the last seven years.

That 2019 report credited golf course architect Walter J. Travis with designing “the original links-style, eighteen-hole course” in 1917 and emphasized retaining the character and history of the property. One part of the report said the early design of East Potomac Park Golf Course (EPPGC) originally largely lacked trees:

Links–style courses typically have very few trees and shrubs. Too many trees would interfere with the characteristic views and ever–present wind.

At EPPGC there were some trees originally, but overwhelmingly the property was treeless allowing for views across the golf course and to the surrounding water. Many trees have grown up within the course due to lack of maintenance, creation of dumping areas, and aggressive planting without regard to the history or function of the golf course. Trees and understory will have to be managed in order for EPPGC to return to its links character.

The Interior Department’s email response to Snopes featured three attached images allegedly showing glimpses of a large garbage problem at the park. We followed up to ask if the images showed debris from Trump’s White House East Wing demolition, seeing as crews reportedly began dumping debris from the construction site of Trump’s ballroom project on the golf course last October. A department spokesperson denied it with a one-word answer: “No.”

For further reading, we previously reported about a similar rumor alleging Trump ordered the removal of cherry trees from the same park, the site of the nation’s first cherry blossom planting. Reyes’ opinion didn’t mention anything about the removal of cherry trees.

Sources