A federal judge in Washington ruled Saturday that the Trump administration cannot close East Potomac Park to the public for now, dealing a blow to the president's effort to renovate its golf course. The administration had announced plans to close what is effectively the entire area of East Potomac and Hains Point starting Sunday. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote that while litigation moves forward, the course, along with surrounding bike and walking paths, must remain open to the public, except for routine, temporary closures consistent with the course's historical operating practices and as needed to address articulated, imminent threats to public safety.

Reyes wrote that closing the park would irreparably harm the plaintiffs, the Washington, D.C., Preservation League, which regularly uses the park, and that it runs counter to the public interest in utilizing national parkland. She wrote that the government had not plausibly identified any harm it would suffer from a temporary restraining order preserving the status quo. The order does not require the administration to keep operating the golf course, including the concession stand or pro shop, but it specifies that the administration cannot use the absence of golf operations as a reason to exclude the public from the course.S1S2

The administration had argued the park must close for repairs, including a seawall it described as an imminent threat to public safety. Reyes expressed skepticism, pointing to the National Park Service's speed in felling more than 400 healthy trees in the area within ten days, an action she had earlier called bad faith. "If public safety were at risk, NPS would have taken a step, any step, to address the safety issues it knew about," she wrote.S1

The ruling followed a contentious hearing Friday in which government lawyer Adam Gustafson argued that the decision to close the park on Sunday was distinct from President Donald Trump's Oct. 18 announcement on Truth Social that the park's three link-style golf courses would be transformed into one 18-hole championship-style course. Trump referred to the park as "trash island" just hours before the ruling, writing that the Department of the Interior was going to make it the best golf course anywhere in the world, and he criticized Reyes in the same period.S1