Trump Shares Trash Island Images After Judge Ana Reyes Blocks Tree Cutting

Judge Reyes and “Trash Island”

President Donald Trump urged a federal judge to “study” images of “Trash Island,” his nickname for a Washington, D.C., golf course his administration is fighting in court to turn into what he argues could be a “world class” facility.

Trump shared dozens of snaps to Truth Social showing broken fencing, flooding, piles of poles and log-filled dumpsters at the East Potomac Golf Links course, a site his administration has admitted to using as a dumping ground for debris from its White House East Wing demolition.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes used a Monday hearing to take on the administration’s plans to renovate the course, and Reyes asked the administration’s attorneys, “Do I believe the president of the United States or do I believe you?”

Trump also referred to Reyes as a “crazed lunatic” after she temporarily blocked the administration from cutting additional trees on the site in response to the felling of hundreds of trees on the ground.

Reyes told the court she had been receiving death threats over the case, emphasizing, “I really don’t think that’s what the founders envisioned.”

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Reporting for this sectionHuffPost

Tree felling, notice, and posts

Judge Ana C. Reyes chaired a hearing in which she called for senior Department of the Interior (DOI) officials to testify after hundreds of trees were cut down a week ago with little notice.

Reyes pushed back on the government’s testimony that the recent tree felling in the park and plans for the new golf course were not connected, saying, “There is no universe in which all of this coincidentally happened all at the same time,”.

Trump then posted on Truth Social, writing, “Here are pictures of Trash Island for the judge to study. This is just a small area, and better than some!”

Trump also wrote that the nickname “Trash Island, Washington, D.C.” referred to the “broken and dilapidated golf course” that is the subject of “frivolous litigation in the United States court system,” and he said his plan would “turn trash Island into an island of beauty and success.”

The Department of Justice sought to recuse Reyes from the case, and Reyes declined to step aside after telling the court the park holds “a deep amount of meaning for people of the district, and is protected as a historic landmark.”

Reporting for this sectionNewsweek

What is at stake next

The dispute centers on East Potomac Park, a federal land managed by the National Park Service, part of the Interior Department, and the case continues as National Links Trust operates the golf course for now. The administration’s plans have drawn legal challenges over concerns that the government has not used federal review and approval processes, while plaintiffs argue Trump’s plan to redevelop the course goes beyond the park’s 2019 preservation plan. CNN described the Monday hearing as a marathon showdown in which Reyes issued an order requiring the government to give at least three days’ notice before making any “irreparable modification” to the course.

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CNN also reported that the case has involved the administration removing, with less of a day’s notice to the court, of 400-plus trees from the park earlier this month, and Reyes told Associate Attorney General Stan Woodward, “I don’t know what to do, when I keep getting different stories,”. Reyes said she was considering whether to issue a longer-term order limiting what the administration can do to the course, including cutting down more trees, as the litigation remains tied to Trump’s public push for construction to begin “IMMEDIATELY.”

Work to begin immediately3 of 5 outlets reported it · not in HuffPost and 1 more▾

Reporting for this sectionCNN