Like that battery bunny, this story just keeps going… and going… and going.
By Benjamin Groff | benandsteve.com GroffMedia2026©
November 5, 2026
Back on April 1, I wrote a satirical piece about Washington’s cherry trees being cut down. It was supposed to be an April Fools joke.
Apparently, I should have picked a subject Washington would have more difficulty turning into a controversy. Something less combustible. Like gasoline.
Readers who followed the story will remember that I later received an explanation connecting tree removal to repairs around the Tidal Basin. My May 24 follow-up acknowledged that the seawall work was real. Another update followed in July as concerns about trees at East Potomac Park developed. Those earlier pieces are the background to this report, but they should not be mistaken for proof that every subsequent tree removal involved the same project.
Now hundreds of trees have been cut down at East Potomac Golf Links, and a federal judge is demanding answers about the government’s conduct.
Before going further, two distinctions matter.
First, approximately 430 trees were removed in the October operation. The available reporting does not establish that they were all cherry trees. Earlier claims that dozens of cherry trees had been removed at the golf course also exceeded what could be verified.
Second, the Tidal Basin seawall repairs and the East Potomac golf course dispute are separate projects. One cannot serve as a blanket explanation for the other.
The seawall explanation was real
In March 2024, the National Park Service announced a $113 million seawall rehabilitation project at the Tidal Basin and West Potomac Park. Its plans included removing 158 cherry trees, along with other trees, to make room for construction. Replacement planting was part of the project from the beginning.
That history deserves a clear place in this update. The seawall project was announced before Trump’s second administration. Its existence was not an invented excuse, even if it did not answer questions about trees being removed elsewhere.
Interior announced the restored seawalls’ reopening on April 21, 2026, reporting that the project included planting 546 trees, among them 353 cherry trees.
What happened at East Potomac
According to ABC News, the government notified the plaintiffs at 4:55 p.m. on Friday, October 9, that tree cutting would take place over the holiday weekend. Crews began the next day. A Justice Department attorney subsequently told the court that 430 trees had been removed.
The administration maintained that the work implemented recommendations from a 2019 cultural landscape report and was separate from President Trump’s proposed golf course overhaul. CNN reported that officials could not explain to Judge Ana Reyes why so many trees needed to come down so suddenly.
Reyes’s October 26 opinion described the operation as removing hundreds of healthy, nonhazardous trees with less than eighteen hours’ notice. At the preliminary-injunction stage, she rejected the government’s effort to characterize what happened as routine maintenance and found the cutting connected to the broader redevelopment.
There is a considerable distance between removing a dangerous limb and removing a landscape. The court is now examining how the government crossed it.
Why the judge was furious
Reyes had repeatedly sought meaningful advance notice before irreversible work occurred. Government lawyers had offered assurances about providing it.
But accuracy requires acknowledging that she had not yet put the earlier notice requirement into a formal order. At the October 12 hearing, she expressly identified that omission as the reason she had not initiated contempt proceedings over the cutting.
The supported account is therefore serious enough without embellishment: hundreds of trees were removed after repeated judicial warnings, with notice arriving late on a Friday before crews began Saturday.
By the time the court could intervene, the trees were already down.
The restrictions—and today’s development
On October 26, Reyes issued a preliminary injunction requiring court authorization for further tree removal or damage, with a narrow exception for imminent public-safety threats. She also required ten days’ written notice before other irreversible changes to the course. These protections apply while the lawsuit proceeds; they are not a final judgment resolving every disputed issue.
The dispute escalated again on October 30. Reuters reported that Reyes ordered an investigation into whether Justice Department attorneys violated ethics rules, appointed a special master, and directed the preservation of relevant documents. Her concerns included potentially misleading statements and omissions about the administration’s renovation plans. The investigation is not itself a finding that misconduct occurred.
Where that leaves this story
My April piece was satire. The seawall repairs were real. The October golf course cutting was a separate event, and the government’s explanations for it are now under judicial scrutiny.
I cannot establish that the person who contacted me was a White House insider. Nor does this latest dispute prove that every suspicion I had earlier was correct. Readers deserve those distinctions alongside the criticism.
What troubles me is the permanence of the action compared with the time needed to examine it. Lawyers can revise a filing. Officials can offer another explanation. A judge can demand testimony.
A mature tree does not get a correction notice and stand back up.
An April Fools joke ought to end with somebody laughing. This chapter has ended, so far, with hundreds of stumps and a federal judge demanding the truth.
