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A federal judge on Monday barred the Trump administration from removing trees from East Potomac Golf Links in Washington, D.C., in a colorful ruling that follows a weekslong controversy over President Trump’s plans to overhaul the publicly owned course.

“The Court earlier stated, ‘I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees,'” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote. “The Court still does not speak for the trees. It speaks only for the rule of law.”

In a 70-page preliminary injunction ruling, Reyes prohibited the government from “removing or damaging” any trees on the golf course while a lawsuit challenging the renovation plan works its way through the court system. The judge also required 10 days’ notice before the government makes “any irreparable modification” to the course.

The judge had previously blocked tree removal through Monday.

In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump called the ruling “unconstitutional” and said his administration would seek appeal. He added that the government would move forward with closing the course on Nov. 15.

“To have to give advanced notices to a judge who has no expertise in Golf, Architecture, Landscaping, Construction, or anything else having to do with building such a World Class Project, is not fair, appropriate, or Constitutional,” the president wrote, arguing the project is “totally ‘as of right.'”

Mr. Trump has sought to overhaul the golf course — which sits beside the Potomac River — for months, pitching a “World Class Championship Golf Course” fit to host high-profile professional tournaments instead of the current “dysfunctional” course. The D.C. Preservation League sued over the planned changes to the course, arguing the government violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to analyze the project’s impacts.

Reyes has sparred with the government since it cut down hundreds of trees earlier this month with little notice to the court or plaintiffs. In a hearing two weeks ago, after more than 430 trees were felled, the judge told lawyers for the government that they had “lost credibility,” and she was “furious” and “thoroughly unamused.”

Mr. Trump said last week the course would close for construction beginning in November, and it would reopen in 15 months. He later said work would begin “IMMEDIATELY.”

In her ruling Monday, Reyes argued Mr. Trump’s statements about the renovation plans were tough to square with government lawyers’ position that it’s legally too early to challenge the plans in court because there was no final decision.

“Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President,” she wrote. “This started as a case about golf. That good walk spoiled. But it has become much more. 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.”

Reyes said she was initially reluctant to intervene in the case, writing that she “would much prefer not to have to resolve Lorax v. Once‑ler redux” — a reference to an earlier court hearing in which Reyes invoked the Dr. Seuss character to explain why she wasn’t interested in micromanaging the federal government’s tree management efforts.

She said she only intervened “because the Government did what it assured all it would not do,” by chopping down hundreds of trees on the golf course.

Reyes found that the D.C. Preservation League is likely to succeed in showing the Trump administration’s plans for the golf course violate the legal requirement for an environmental review.

She also found that the tree removals were part of Mr. Trump’s renovation plan, rejecting the government’s argument that they were part of an unrelated maintenance effort.

The judge said she did not find statements by the Department of Interior’s deputy chief of staff to be credible, including his description of the agency’s tree management plan as “cleaning up” the course.

WTX US News has reached out to the Justice Department and the Department of Interior for comment.

Mr. Trump has feuded with Reyes, calling her a “crazed lunatic.”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration asked Reyes to recuse herself from the case, arguing that she had shown “open hostility” to the government and that her “histrionics in prior hearings have clearly demonstrated she is no longer impartial.”

“To name just a few examples of bias, Judge Reyes has unfairly questioned Trump Administration attorneys’ intelligence, allowed her disdain for the Trump Administration to influence how hearings unfold, and systematically disregarded basic separation of powers principles and Article III constraints on judicial authority,” government attorneys wrote.

Reyes rejected that request and denied that she is biased, listing out compliments that she has paid government lawyers.

“So what happened? Not sudden onset bias,” Reyes wrote in her denial. “Instead, the Government decided to remove over 500 healthy, non-invasive trees from East Potomac Golf Course. It waited until 4:55 p.m. on the Friday of a holiday weekend to give notice that it would begin removing trees within 15 hours. It removed nearly 430 trees in one day and would have destroyed hundreds more but for a rain delay.”

Washington — A federal judge on Monday found that the Justice Department unlawfully fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, from her post as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman said in a 55-page decision that Comey’s removal violated the constitutional separation of powers and federal law. The judge retroactively reinstated Comey to her role as a federal prosecutor and ordered the Trump administration to provide her back pay from the date of her firing in July 2025 through Dec. 20, when she accepted a different job.

Comey’s lawsuit was one of several filed by former government employees who were fired without cause that tested the limits of the president’s power to fire federal officials.

The Trump administration had argued that Article II of the Constitution gives the president unrestricted removal power, and said Congress could not limit the removal of federal prosecutors.

But in his decision, Furman ruled that Comey’s firing violated the Civil Service Reform Act, a landmark law enacted in 1978 that provides protections for federal workers. The Trump administration, he wrote, is attempting to “upend” long-settled case law allowing Congress to regulate the removal of so-called inferior officers.

“Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system,” Furman wrote.

Comey’s legal team cheered the decision as a “hard-earned victory” for her and all civil servants.

“As the Court correctly held, to accept the government’s argument about unlimited executive power ‘would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.’ This decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law,” lawyers Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan said in a statement.

A Justice Department spokesperson said it “disagrees with this decision and will appeal in due course.”

Comey had served as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan since 2015, handling high-profile criminal cases against figures including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and former Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez.

In a letter to her former colleagues at the time of her dismissal, Comey said she was “summarily fired via memo” by the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, and was not given a reason for her termination.

The letter she received stated, “Pursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States, your employment with the Department of Justice is hereby terminated, and you are removed from federal service effective immediately.”

It was initially unclear who made the decision to oust Comey, but in May, the Trump administration said then-Attorney General Pam Bondi “directed” her removal, and her successor, Todd Blanche, “ratified” her termination.

Comey sued the Justice Department over her firing last year, alleging she had probably been fired because President Trump dislikes her father, who has been indicted twice during the second Trump administration. One of the criminal cases was tossed out, and James Comey has denied wrongdoing in the second.

“Ms. Comey’s termination — without cause, without advance notice, and without any opportunity to contest it — was unlawful and unconstitutional,” Comey’s attorneys wrote in their complaint.

The Trump administration attempted to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that Comey was required to bring her claims before the Merit Systems Protection Board, the agency tasked with adjudicating appeals from federal employees regarding adverse actions taken against them, but Furman denied the government’s motion and allowed the case to continue.

Furman found that because Comey’s firing rested on Article II of the Constitution — not a federal law governing the civil service — the federal court had jurisdiction to hear the case.

In court filings, the Justice Department admitted that Comey had received a rating of “outstanding” on her performance reviews from 2019 through 2024, but said that her firing had been carried out under legal authority Congress granted to the attorney general to fire assistant U.S. attorneys.

In defending Comey’s firing, the Trump administration relied, in part, on the Supreme Court’s June decision allowing the president to fire members of certain independent agencies without cause. In that case, the high court overturned a more than 90-year-old decision that allowed Congress to restrict the president’s ability to fire officials from multimember agencies at will.

But Furman said the Justice Department’s argument amounted to a “sweeping and unprecedented theory of executive authority.”