Donald Trump’s ambitious plans for a historic golf course have hit an early obstacle: the people who actually use the park.
In late July, as part of his ongoing D.C. makeover, the president announced his plans to overhaul the East Potomac Golf Links on Hains Point, saying work would begin on Sept. 1.
Trees have been felled around the course, The Washington Post reports, but now grassroots activist groups Washington Area Bicycle Association (WABA) and Save East Po are working to halt the president’s grand plans for the public golf courses, which opened more than 100 years ago.
NOTUS reports that the coalition is focused on protecting the area and came out over the weekend wearing t-shirts reading “Save Hains Point” and “Fore the People, Not the President.”
“We plan to keep protesting until the work is stopped and/or the plans are shared,” WABA’s executive director Elizabeth Kiker told the Daily Beast.
Workers removed six trees on Saturday, with more pulled out earlier, but officials have yet to confirm whether the course will close or what the work will look like.
“We have been told by the National Park Service [that] work will not start tomorrow,” Kiker said. “We are still watching very carefully.”
The Post reports that an unofficial count puts the total number of trees removed so far at around 60.
The Department of the Interior, which is responsible for the National Park Service, said in a statement acquired by NOTUS and the Post that the felling of the trees was simply regular upkeep, “with selective removal of hazard trees, non-native invasive trees, and declining and dying trees that cannot be brought back to good health through any degree of intervention.
The White House did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
“Trees throughout the park are regularly monitored for potential safety impacts to visitors, and when a tree is determined to be dying, declining, or hazardous, our arborists may make the decision to remove it.”
The protesters, however, aren’t buying it.
“Maybe they were ailing, but boy they sure didn’t look like it,” Kiker told NOTUS. She added that it appeared possible it could be “the beginning of them tearing this entire space out and building it to be something that is not for the public.”
A lawsuit has been filed by the DC Preservation League and two local golfers to challenge the plans, but it is currently stalled; there is no clear indication that the government’s plans have been shared in the proceedings.
In early July, Joe Biden-appointed District Judge Ana Reyes refused to block the work, but also refused to throw out the suit. She wasn’t even entirely clear on details around the calendar.
“Either the President just pulled the date out of thin air and never heard from anybody about it, or never talked to anybody about it, and it’s, who knows what he was talking about. It’s either that, or there is a Sept. 1 date that means something,” she said, according to WTOP News.
“The protest was a group of hundreds of people who care about this place and the desires of one person to develop a luxury golf course should not and cannot come before all else,” Save East Po founder Alex Rosen told the Daily Beast.
“Hundreds of people came down to tell the Department of the Interior and the president that they are not entitled to our park,” Rosen continued. “Just because the president wants a luxury golf course does not mean he gets that. It is disgusting on so many levels.”
Rosen uses the park to run, cycle, play golf, and get away from the noise of the city, but fears that the president’s projects around D.C. haven’t paid off and that this could be the same story.
“I have said it before, and I will say it again: this situation is fundamentally a case of if we the people own our public lands or if the temporary inhabitant of the White House does.
“On a broader point—as a D.C. resident, I think you can pretty unambiguously say that all the president’s actions in the District have been a failure. East Wing—demolished. Reflecting Pool—closed for months. Lafayette Park—closed. Who’s to say the same won’t be the case [with] East Potomac Park? Our capital is not the temporary President’s fiefdom.
“And to the people that think the president is ‘beautifying’ D.C., I challenge them to come to D.C. and see for themselves. We don’t oppose the president’s maneuvers in D.C. because of who is doing them; we oppose them because they have made every DMV resident’s life worse and at very minimal gain.”
