Heavy machinery arrived at a historic Washington D.C. golf course on Tuesday to begin a 15-month closure and renovation project. The Trump administration characterized the deployment as a purely conceptual exercise to help the judiciary understand what it might do if a final decision were ever made.
Heavy machinery arrived at a historic Washington D.C. golf course on Tuesday to begin a 15-month closure and renovation project. The Trump administration characterized the deployment as a purely conceptual exercise to help the judiciary understand what it might do if a final decision were ever made.
The mobilization, which the White House claims is necessary to address "disease infested trees," proceeds over an active federal court order halting development. Justice Department lawyers had previously assured the presiding judge that no final agency action had been taken, arguing in a recent filing that the President had, "at most," given "preliminary thought" to rebuilding the property.
Following the arrival of excavators and logging crews, the court ordered the government to explain whether its legal position had changed. Administration officials maintained that the rapid felling of timber and tearing up of greens is simply the standard industry process for early-stage ideation.
You cannot expect a developer to fully evaluate a site's potential without first clear-cutting eighty acres of diseased timber to see how the light hits it," said Arthur Penhaligon, Director of Ideation and Forestry at the Trump Organization. "This 15-month closure is simply the President brainstorming out loud with a fleet of Caterpillar excavators.
Government attorneys have until Friday to file a brief assuring the court that the pouring of 4,000 tons of fresh concrete over the 18th hole is strictly an exploratory hypothetical.