As an example of how stupid everything has become, District Court Judge Ana Reyes is raging at the Trump administration for cutting down trees on a federally owned golf course, the East Potomac Golf Links. She’s extremely angry about the towering judicial controversy, which is somehow a major piece of national news.
So it must an absolute jewelbox, right? Judge Reyes must be locked in a life-and-death battle with the executive branch over the very salvation of one of our richest national treasures, or something. Trump must be trying to destroy the Yosemite Valley of golf courses.
Let’s go to the reviews!
Here’s one from a golfer who deplores the mixing of golf and politics, and doesn’t want anything to do with the Trump stuff. The course, he says, “is in dire need of a renovation,” because it’s nothing much: “In all honesty, today’s Blue Course is your stereotypical municipal golf course, with a flat terrain, below-average conditioning, and pretty boring features. The setting with water on three sides and views of national monuments is memorable, but the course itself is fairly forgettable.”
Reader reviews on the Golf Now website trend toward this 2024 review: “Not awful, not great, but what you’d expect from a city course.” Nobody seems to love it or hate it. It’s there, and it’s cheap.
Tripadvisor, more of the same: “Doesn’t have the Wow! factor of some other courses,” reads one review. Here’s another: “Holes are thought out well. Upkeep is horrible. Turf torn on 6 of 18 holes, debris liters [sic] all of the course but the edges of the fairways have debris obviously from past seasons that means the course has not had a good sweeping in some time.” And so on. “Was a fun time, but the course does need a bit of care.”
It’s all so desperately important. The judiciary must act to keep the executive branch from redesigning an old and run-down golf course, or we’ll brutally annihilate the very heart of our republic. Mercifully, the Fourth Estate stands watch astride the bulwarks.
The docket for the case, which has been mired in litigation since February, runs to a hundred line items. A couple dozen attorneys are listed on the case, including Norm Eisen and Abbe Lowell, and the roll call of law firms is a laundry list of D.C. powerhouses like Covington & Burling. Here, for one example among many, are the lawyers who represent the Department of the Interior, minus their phone numbers and email addresses so no one stoops to prank calling them:
Michael Keith Robertson
DOJ-ENRD
150 M Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002
LEAD ATTORNEY
ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Stanley Edmund Woodward , Jr.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
950 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20530
LEAD ATTORNEY
ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Adam R.F. Gustafson
DOJ-Enrd
Environment and Natural Resources Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20530
ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Andrew Block
DOJ-OASG
Office of the Associate Attorney General
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20530
ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Benjamin Hayes
Department of Justice
Civil Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Marissa Ann Piropato
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
ENRD
P.O. Box 7611
Washington, DC 20044-7611
ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Robert N. Stander
DOJ-Enrd
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Obviously, not enough lawyers yet.
1.) We’re going to fix up an old and run-down golf course
2.) Ugly and endless courtroom brawl
3.) Major national crisis
Do people just have too much time on their hands?
Chris Bray is a senior correspondent at The Federalist and a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at "Tell Me How This Ends," here.