(CNN) — Whenever President Donald Trump gets an idea for a major project or renovation in Washington, DC, a pattern has emerged: move forward and ask questions later.
Public sagas over Trump’s proposed “triumphal arch,” the East Wing ballroom construction and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation have followed this playbook – provoking outcry and numerous legal challenges.
Now, the greenways of a manmade peninsula just south of the National Mall is next on Trump’s quest to remake the nation’s capital in his style, and they’re poised to be made over in a way that’s par for the course for this president.
The administration is on track to push ahead with turning the 300-acre East Potomac Park and its public golf course into a championship course without first getting approvals from two key agencies that have oversight of DC public spaces.
Neither the National Capital Planning Commission nor the Commission on Fine Arts have received any golf course plans from the Trump administration to review, officials from both told CNN. Neither agency meets in August, and ground is supposed to be broken by the start of the following month.
And based on what has been publicly reported, a project of this complexity and ambition would typically require months of regulatory reviews to examine environmental impact, questions over historical preservation, planning and design, the officials at each agency said.
On Friday, the administration provided a federal judge overseeing a legal challenge to the project with new information about the venture. It included a disclosure that the government did not finish testing soil from the demolition of the East Wing that was deposited onto the golf course before deeming it was safe.
The revelation opens the door to allowing plaintiffs to question administration officials under oath.
The DC Preservation League and two local golfers are pressing US District Judge Ana Reyes to issue an order that would bar the Trump administration from moving ahead.
Critics worry that proper approvals and legal battles have hardly handicapped the president before.
“There is really this ability to ignore regulatory guardrails, rules and protocols that have existed in the past. And we just see it again and again, and the golf course, sadly, is yet another example of that,” said Charles Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has filed lawsuits against several other Trump projects.
Trump announced last month on Truth Social that renovations to East Potomac Golf Links will start on September 1.
The Interior Department, which oversees the project as it’s on National Park Service land, did not answer CNN’s questions as to when they will seek approval – or if they will. A spokesperson said: “President Donald J. Trump is fulfilling his commitment to make D.C. Safe and Beautiful as shown by the working fountains, clean parks and safe streets across the district for the first time in decades.”
The agency is committed to “continuing the relationships we have built with the local golf communities to ensure these courses are safe, beautiful, open, affordable, enjoyable, accessible, and world-class for people living in and visiting the greatest capital city in the world,” they added.
A wide range project
Trump, an avid golfer, first publicly proposed the idea of taking over and expanding the municipal golf course in May.
That month, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum unveiled a rendering of the planned renovations from Fazio Design, a consultancy owned by the noted golf architect Tom Fazio, who designed Trump’s Bedminster golf course and three other of the president’s properties.
The Links currently offers two nine-hole courses and an 18-hole course.
“Like iconic public courses of Bethpage Black & Torrey Pines, East Potomac will offer locals — of the National Capital Region — championship-quality golf at affordable, highly discounted rates,” Burgum posted on X with a rendering of the Links upgrades that featured one nine-hole course and kept an 18-hole course and pre-existing recreational area and playground.
Then, Trump, Burgum and Fazio were photographed walking the course together on a rainy Sunday in June, blueprints in hand.
The plans they were seen with have not been yet made publicly available, but appeared to have been updated and more expansive, with a more complete takeover of the entire peninsula. The playground, recreational area and the 9-hole ranges often used by more novice players have been jettisoned for a single 18-hole course.
Trump said after the visit that the course was “dilapidated, worn out, and very dangerous and outdated.” He also said he would build “one of the Greatest Golf Courses anywhere in the World,” and that it would remain open to the public.
The plans have sparked concern within the DC local golf community – as well as biking and running communities – who have used the space for decades. Some are worried about preserving amount of public access and the history of the land, which includes some of DC’s oldest cherry trees that, in the latest plans, appear to be out.
“We’re not anti-golf,” Alex Rosen, of Save East Po, a community group created to fight Trump’s plans. “We’re against turning a beloved muni into a championship venue, and against turning the rest of the peninsula into a single-use, golf-only destination.”
On Saturday the group, along with local DC Council members, will be holding a community event to celebrate the park and protest any plans for reducing the public space for biking, walking, running, birding and fishing.
Speaking to Golf.com in June, Fazio said the president’s ambition is to upgrade the links to “literally a national monument,” where a national golf championship could be held. The aim would be for the course to be ready for play by summer 2028, before Trump leaves office.
“The president happens to be a guy of action,” Fazio said. “He wants to get this thing done so people can enjoy it play it, and not one of these ‘10 years down the road and drag it out forever’ things. He wants to get it done now.”
Yet Fazio’s formal involvement in the project is unclear. While Trump said on social media that “Tom Fazio will be the Course Architect,” government lawyers told the District Court this month that “there is no formal relationship with Mr. Fazio and the Department of Interior or the Park Service.”
Neither the Department of Interior nor Fazio responded to CNN’s questions about the nature of their work together.
Golf insiders who spoke to CNN noted that Fazio has previously done specific projects for free.
A lawyer for the government acknowledged at the hearing earlier this month that this is one possible route for the administration, prompting Judge Reyes to wonder aloud whether it would be a tactic to avoid scrutiny over a possible no-bid contract.
“If Mr. Fazio says, ‘I’m donating all this for free,’ you can accept that without getting a bid for people to pay for it,’” she noted.
Driving toward legal battles
The plaintiffs for the case before Reyes, filed by lawyers from Democracy Forward, contend that the project must be blocked because it runs afoul of federal environmental regulations.
Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, has declined to intervene – for now – because she was unconvinced that any laws had been broken.
However, she ordered both sides to come to an agreement for the Trump administration to report on any new activity to the court with regards to the golf course while initial stages of the litigation play out.
“I need to have some comfort,” she said. “If we get bulldozers on site and they start mowing down half of the golf course, that’s irretrievable.”
Separately, the government had to answer four questions from the court about the project.
In asking for the information, Reyes had indicated that she was concerned about how soil testing was conducted last year, and said that plaintiffs’ lawyers would be able to question officials under oath if there were issues with how it had played out.
“You don’t get to say something is clean and not a problem and sign off that it’s clean and not a problem and then do the testing later,” she said at the time.
Litigants were already on guard.
“It seems, certainly, that they’re headstrong on moving ahead without the proper approvals in place,” Alex Dickson, founding editor of Beltway Golfer and one of the plaintiffs, told CNN.
Will Bardwell, senior counsel at Democracy Forward, told CNN: “I think everybody knows they’re going to do as little as they think they can just so they can check the box and move on.”
“These are supposed to be real in-depth examinations of the effects that an agency’s actions will have on the environment and the injuries that it will do to historic places and options,” he said. “There’s no way you can do that seriously in two months.”
CNN’s Devan Cole and Abigail Roedersheimer contributed to this report
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.