Donald Trump is busy setting the world on fire, but his real concerns are remodeling the White Hiuse and the District of Columbia. He likes to defy environmental reviews and yo make irreversible changes.
One of his plans involves turning a public golf course in D.C. into a championship course. A federal judge ordered him not to make any changes without getting it cleared by her.
A “furious” federal judge excoriated the Trump administration Monday morning for cutting down hundreds of trees at East Potomac Golf Links, the historic course eyed for redevelopment by President Donald Trump, telling government lawyers they had cost their credibility by ignoring her repeated warnings to give notice before work continued.
Over the weekend, his team cut down 430 trees. Another 300 will be cut down. The judge is furious.
Trump thinks he is a king and doesn’t need permission. Fortunately for him, he’s surrounded by sycophants who do whatever he tells them.
Rick Maese of The Washington Post reported:
Government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes at an emergency hearing that approximately 430 trees were removed Saturday and that another 299 are still targeted for removal. Reyes ordered the government to stop cutting down trees until at least 2 p.m. Tuesday, by when she hopes to hear testimony from another administration official involved in the tree removal.
Reyes says she had been reluctant to issue a temporary restraining order in the case. But, she added, “I have no faith that the government isn’t going to cut them down unless there’s an order in place not to do so.”
Violating her order “by two seconds” would prompt contempt proceedings, the judge said.
“I am thoroughly unamused right now,” Reyes said as the hearing began. “I do not know how I could have made it any plainer. I did not want what happened to happen.”
At one point, Justice Department attorney Marissa Ann Piropato told Reyes that government lawyers “did our best” to keep the court apprised of any construction work at the course.
“No, you did not do your best,” Reyes responded, her voice rising. “You did your absolute worst.”
The hearing followed an emergency request filed late Sunday by preservationists seeking to stop the National Park Service from removing additional trees at the historic public golf course.
The D.C. Preservation League and two golfers allege that the administration is racing ahead with irreversible work while avoiding the environmental and historic-preservation reviews required for the president’s proposed transformation of East Potomac into a championship-level course.
This isn’t new for Trump.
“Aggressive Defiance of Local Zoning and Regulations: Throughout his career in New York, Atlantic City, and Palm Beach, Trump frequently clashed with local planning boards. He routinely sued municipalities over zoning restrictions, historic preservation laws, and building height limits, often pushing forward with unauthorized modifications and settling the resulting fines or legal disputes as a cost of doing business.”
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The 40 weeping willows outside the Kennedy Center were also tossed in the wood chipper, and last week in Arizona four ancient cottonwoods, one known as the grandmother tree that was 250 years old, were also killed to build the wall at the border. Cottonwoods are sacred to some indigenous people; the Maya believe the roots connect the underworld to the heavens via the trees’ crowns.
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Las Playas Intaglio, a sacred 272-foot-long fish-shaped geoglyph in Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. [1, 2]
Key Details
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Trump can and will ignore any federal court order he wants to ignore because the reality is that the courts — not even the U.S. Supreme Court — have no means of enforcing their orders, other than asking Trump’s Department of Justice to do so by sending the DOJ’s federal marshals…and that’s not gonna happen.
REMEMBER THIS: Trump’s role model as President is Andrew Jackson who when ordered by the Supreme Court to not remove Native Americans from the land given to them by U.S. treaties, said (in effect): “The Supreme Court has made its ruling, but what army is going to enforce it?” Jackson went ahead and rounded up the Native Americans and sent them on a death march known as “The Trail of Tears” to faraway reservations. Many hundreds of men, women, and children died of starvation and exposure on that death march, and Jackson and his real estate developer cronies got rich from developing the land they had to leave.
Nothing can stop Trump from ignoring court orders other than his consideration of how it could change the opinion of him by his base. His base doesn’t give a damn about the trees.
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Trump has been ignoring court orders, building codes, environment laws, et al, for decades. This isn’t new. Ignoring the rules and laws goes hand in hand with the lies, rapes, sexual molestation, and cheating. He’d been doing that for most of his life.
Going to court and paying fines is business as usual for him as long as he gets what he wants.
And he’s doing the same thing to get something else he wants: The United States as his family’s fiefdom forever.
If Trump wins his MAGA Project 2025 & 2026 Civil War, he will also rename the United States to Trump/ then break and bankrupt everyone who voted against him and/or criticized (told the truth) about him in public in anyway.
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Trump has always followed Roy Cohn’s advice: do whatever you want, then fight them in court. Or threaten to.
Now that he is president and SCOTUS says he is above the law, he can literally ignore laws and courts. He expected to be congratulated for not putting Hillary in prison.
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I think evidence from Trump and his life shows that Trump wants to be the law and throw people in prison and/or take away their citizenship, and/or have them exterminated and be the only one who decides about everything while doing whatever he wants with no resistance of any kind.
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All of that dictatorial stuff is evident, Lloyd, but his greatest interest is attached to his projects: his golden ballroom is number one. Then there’s the Arch of Triumph (Triumph=Trump!). His public championship golf course. His redecoration of the Oval Pffice as a golden bordello.
These are the things he cares about.
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Trump wants people to worship him like he’s a god and remember him as the greatest president the United States ever had. yet, Trump being who he really is, can never achieve anything like that MAGA fantasy.
I think in the end, history will place Donald Trump above Benedict Arnold as an example of Treason, and more, like unbridled greed, incompetence, and corruption. Trump is already the only president to be impeached twice (if Democrats win the House next month, that number will increase to three impeachments, I think) and Trump is also the only president who won an election as a convicted rapist, fraud and felon.
What kind of person votes for a convicted rapist, fraud and felon?
Since the 1970s, long before Trump became a crooked politician, dozens of woman had already gone public alleging he raped or molested them. He even bragged about it pubilckly.
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If the second report of Jack Smith ever is released or the Epstein files, his list of misdeeds will grow longer.
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My hope is that after he is gone, after the Republicans stop cowering, there will be bipartisan agreement to remove his name from everything he put it on.
The new curse should be “Trump you!”
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I want to be alive when the Toxic T is gone, so I can celebrate.
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You and me both, Lloyd.
Even on opposite coasts, we can raise a glass and toast the event.
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I stopped drinking in 1982, but for that celebration I will make an exception. And if Trump’s heirs lost his ill begotten wealth and it all ended up being used to pay down the national debt he doubled, I’d have two drinks. Still, even his billions will not put a dent in $20+ trillion.
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The national debt is $40 trillion.
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To be fair, I don’t think Trump has any responsibility for the first $20 trillion.
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At the end of Bill Clinton’s second term, the national debt was zero.
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Clinton didn’t add anything to the debt that existed when he entered office. He even ended up with a surplus.
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The expansion of the national debt proves what a failure Musk and DOGE were
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Have seen any of the videos of Jack Smith on September 29, 2026, being questioned for the Senate Judiciary Oversight hearing.
During his September 29, 2026 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, former special counsel Jack Smith forcefully defended his criminal investigations of Donald Trump. He maintained that his probes were strictly apolitical, evidence-based, and adhered to Department of Justice policies.
The five-hour oversight hearing featured starkly contrasting exchanges between Smith and committee members along party lines:
In response to threats of prosecution or retaliation from the Trump administration and congressional allies, Smith declared, “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.” He affirmed he would make the exact same charging decisions today based on the “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” his team discovered.
Promited by Democrats, Smith denounced the Trump administration’s firing and public vilification of career agents, prosecutors, and staff who served on his special counsel team. He characterized these actions as a dangerous assault on the rule of law.
In dialogue with friendly lawmakers, Smith expressed profound concern regarding recent Supreme Court rulings that expanded presidential immunity. He gave a blunt legal rebuke to the idea of carving out immunities for powerful figures, warning that creating legal exceptions for executives fundamentally undermines the democratic principle that no one is above the law.
The Republicans put on a three-ring horror show of the absurd.
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