DC District Court Judge Ana Reyes should have known better. After what happened with Chief Judge James Boasberg, it was clear that the Trump administration was unconcerned about ignoring the orders of the court. More importantly for a judge, it was clear that the AUSAs coming before the court could not be trusted, either to tell the truth or to abide by the judge’s directions. Sure, this never rarely happened before, but it was most assuredly happening now.
And yet, Judge Reyes wanted to believe that the government wouldn’t burn her. And then the government burned her.
A federal judge on Monday excoriated the Trump administration for ripping up hundreds of mature trees at a Washington golf course over the holiday weekend, even though she had directed officials to disclose any major changes before work was started.
In an explosive, four-hour emergency hearing, Judge Ana C. Reyes of the Federal District Court in Washington ordered a one-day halt to any more tree removal at East Potomac Golf Links, and said she would continue proceedings on Tuesday.
The emergency hearing was the product of Judge Reyes’ telling the government not to take any significant action with regard to the municipal golf course without providing advance notice to the court. At 4:55 pm on the Friday of a holiday weekend, notice was provided that the government would be taking some trees down. At the crack of dawn, contractors started cutting down trees. Big trees. Old trees. Lots of trees. By the end of the day, about 400 of 529 trees were gone.
An emergency application was filed and the hearing held Monday, Columbus Day, morning. Judge Reyes was not amused.
“I am thoroughly unamused right now,” Judge Reyes said, appearing remotely from Istanbul, where she had been traveling. She raised her voice at several points to near shouting level.
“What has happened has cost the government all of its credibility with me in this case,” she said, before listing all of the times she had directed the government to alert her to major alterations.
On the surface, the hearing was about tree removal. Full disclosure, I am a huge tree lover and it pains me when mature trees are unnecessarily destroyed. This wanton destruction of trees is, in itself, a travesty as far as I’m concerned. But even though the trees matter greatly, that wasn’t really the gravamen of the judge’s fury.
The Monday morning hearing was technically to address the tree removal, but Judge Reyes made clear that her larger concern was the possibility that the Trump administration had flouted her instructions. Since Mr. Trump returned to office last year, judges have repeatedly been forced to interrogate whether the government has complied with orders across a variety of cases.
Possibility? It’s hard to imagine a stronger slap in the face than what the government delivered here. Of course, the problem is that Judge Reyes didn’t reduce her multiple warnings to a clear, concise order, directing the government not to remove trees, so how would the government possibly know that what it was doing was contrary to the court’s directions (note, directions, not order)?
And if this ridiculous rationale isn’t clear enough, the paragon of propriety, Stephen Miller, brought the insult home.
I missed the part of the Constitutional Convention that put federal judges in charge of golf course maintenance. The Left is endlessly enraged that, after allowing DC to decay for decades, the Trump Administration is making it safe, clean and beautiful.
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) October 12, 2026
While it’s easy to dismiss Miller’s inane characterization of this matter as “golf course maintenance,” it reflects a far more nefarious purpose of undermining and trivializing the authority of the judiciary to fulfill its function. After all, turn it all into a silly joke and who cares that the Trump administration gives judges like Reyes the bird?
Obviously, the fallen trees can’t be righted again. They’re dead. They’re gone. But the fact that the government did this despite Judge Reyes’ direction remains. What, if anything, should the courts do about it? If a district judge holds the administration in contempt, so what? Who’s going to sit in the cell? And even so, will the Supremes back up their baby brethren or hang them out to dry on the shadow docket? Even if they did, which member of the Executive Branch will enforce the order when the president tells them to stand back and stand by?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.