Trump gets Rude Awakening over Project He Wanted Most

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3:27Michael Popok:We got an emergency hearing on Monday morning, 8 a.m. That was in front of Judge Reyes, Anna Reyes, a Biden appointee, about Donald Trump's latest effort to steal public land. In this case, in the East Potomac Park, the Langston Lynx Golf Course, which is the historic black golf course in D.C. Donald Trump has made it clear that as part of his foundation to build a hero's park with 250 statues and let the Washington Commanders football team redevelop their stadium, he wants to get his grubby hands on this historic piece of property from the late 1800s set aside by Congress for the good of the public and the people.

4:13Michael Popok:It's where amateurs go and play, right? It's where blacks in 1941 went and played when jeered by white crowds. Integration happened there. That's where a black community in D.C. learns to golf and learn to golf and golfs. 27 ,000 rounds of golf played just last year. Now, Trump wanted to get rid of the current operator, the D.C. Preservation League and others, and fire them from their lease, get control of the property. This is all Congress's property. That led to a filing of a complaint by our friends at Democracy Forward in February of this year and a series of status conferences. But as soon as this article ran in the Washington Post and in notice, which showed the fundraising, the pictures, the aerial photos, people announcing there was going to be demolition of the golf course, she flew into action and called that hearing this morning.

5:15Michael Popok:And while she's not ready just yet to issue an injunction, much like Judge Leon wasn't ready to issue an injunction on the ballroom coming out of the ground until things happen further, she made it clear if more than 10 dying trees get tagged for demolition, the 11th tree, you got to notify the plaintiffs in this case so they can make their decision. She even went so far as to say, and I'm not going to have full briefing on an issue like this. Be prepared to bring your documents with you. So she's got an itchy trigger finger. She's not ready yet on the injunction. But if she sees movement to destroy this golf course, this historic golf course, which is, when I say golf course, I don't want to trivialize it.

5:59Michael Popok:It's historic. Okay. It was designed by a very famous designer. It is where the black community in D.C. plays. And Donald Trump wants to obliterate it and wipe it off the face of this earth. and the courts and judges like Judge Reyes and groups like Democracy Forward are standing in their way. I'm glad you're here on the Midas Dutch Network and on Legal AF. Take a minute and hit that free subscribe button. Now, here's some comments you might've heard publicly about this takeover of the golf course from the administration. Play it. And they're all coming in and people are now coming in. They're making reservations to come in.

6:34They wanna be in Washington, DC. One of the things we're gonna be redoing is your parks. I'm very good at grass because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place. I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world. And we're going to be re-grassing all of your parks, all brand new sprinkler systems, the best that you can buy, just like Augusta. It'll look like Augusta. It'll look like, more importantly, Trump National Golf Club. That's even better. But we're going to have all brand new, beautiful grass. You know, like everything else, grass has a life. Do you know that?

7:06Grass has a life. And, you know, we have a life and grass is a life. And the grass here died about 40 years ago. So we're going to be rebuilding all of your parks and it's going to happen fast.

7:17Michael Popok:It's going to go up like a miracle. I want to give you a sense because we often talk about federal judges at the district court level and how they're using creativity, their experience, the tools in their tool bag, the inherent authority that they have. to address a defiant, out-of-control Trump administration, who beyond testing the limits is trying to destroy all of the guardrails around the separation of powers. And for Donald Trump, Bob the Builder, he sees, you can see, no greater glory than to completely change the face of Washington, D.C.'s public land owned by Congress for the good of the public.

8:06Michael Popok:He wants to scar and deface it all. He wants to redevelop the National Mall, the reflecting pool. He wants to put up his own mega arch modeled after the Arc de Triomphe. He wants to put up a park of 250 statutes. Lord knows who's going to be picking those statues. He wants to, he's already put his name up on the Kennedy Center, which he's about to demolish. He knocked over on purpose in the middle of the night without permits or permission, the East Wing dedicated to White House First Ladies. He's done all of that. And then judges have to try to play catch up. But I think Judge Reyes, who we have followed closely on Legal AF, took a page not only from her own experience, But watching how Judge Leon has managed the ballroom issue.

9:00He eventually issued an injunction many months later to stop the ballroom.

9:06Michael Popok:Some people may quibble about it being too late. But, you know, that injunction is what's up on appeal. So she's not ready to be, as she said, Parks and Rec and be Amy Poehler just yet. But wagged her finger about what she's willing to do and when she's willing to do it. one's properly notified. Let me show you a clip. Anna Reyes, Judge Reyes, was recently on Legal AF on Speak Up for Justice, a group of judges, current and former, who talk about being a judge in the era of Donald Trump. Here's Judge Reyes. I'll just say that my all-time favorite social media post was I had issued a decision that favored the Trump administration, and someone wrote, it's a great decision, but everything's become so political these days.

9:56I know that if President Biden had appointed the judge, it would have been a different decision. And someone responded, President Biden appointed the judge. And I think, you know, when we have all these sort of back and forth, I've issued decisions in favor of the administration. I've issued decisions that did not favor the administration. And again, what we do is look at what's in front of us in try to do the best that we can. I issued a different set of decisions that favored the Trump administration. And a number of people wrote and said, oh, she's just a Trumpy. She's just a Trumper. She just likes President Trump.

10:40She's a Trump appointee and can't be trusted to do anything. And I sit with four other judges who were appointed by President Trump, and they are phenomenal judges and they are respected jurists and they take their job seriously. They're terrific human beings. I love working with them.

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12:25Michael Popok:That's Q-U-A-L-I-A life.com slash legal AF. And then use code legal AF. Thanks to Qualia. for sponsoring this episode. So what's going to happen here? Let me just read to you from the, there's a kind of a dirty little secret that connects the ballroom to this attempted redevelopment of this golf course in Donald Trump's image. And that is that apparently there's something when you do construction called fill, it is supposed to be clean dirt. that is dumped onto a site in order to either fix a leveling problem with the site, like the site needs more dirt, more compact dirt, in order to support a structure on top of it.

13:19Michael Popok:They want to extend the site. They need to fill in something, like maybe a pond or something. So you often need fill when you're doing a construction project. There's a hole here, an excavation hole there, a pond here. There's too little dirt over here. And there's companies that are excavation companies, gravel and fill companies, and they're in this business. And they take it from pits and different locations. Sometimes it's taken from a construction site. Apparently, fill that represents the debris from the East Wing construction, demolition, has been poured onto this golf course. But as noted by Democracy Forward and their filing, in the ballroom case, they said that the dirt was not cleaned from the ballroom, underneath the ballroom, that after the demolition, it was filled with asbestos and arsenic and lead.

14:18Michael Popok:Oh my, let's put that all into the golf course, shall we? So there's also now an environmental remediation problem and a violation of environmental law by the Trump administration that's been suggested in the filings. This is what they say, the Democracy Forward group in their filing. And I'm going to have as a programming note, tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to have an interview up and running on Legal AF YouTube channel of Sky Perryman of Democracy Forward, whose group brought this particular lawsuit. They say on page one that from the moment plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, defendants insisted that any plan to renovate the East Potomac Golf Course, known as the Langston Golf Course, was in its infancy, little more than office chatter.

15:06Michael Popok:As late as April 30th, defendants, meaning the Trump side, maintained in a sworn declaration that the management of the East Potomac golf course is unchanged and no formal decision has been made regarding the nature and scope of renovations. 24 hours later, on Friday evening, May 1, the DC news site Notice, we'll put it up here, reported that the Trump administration will close the golf course at the end of the day on Sunday and begin construction, including tree clearing, on Monday in line with the National Park Service's pre-approved plans. It confirmed the major renovations with a golf course architect, Tom Fazio, who Donald Trump has used in other major golf courses.

15:52Michael Popok:In mere hours, then, defendants' supposedly hypothetical concepts will turn into bulldozers, much as the White House East Wing was demolished without advanced notice or apparent approval. Washington Post, they say, ran a story and notice reporting, Washington Post reported on May 1 that there was private fundraising efforts to destroy the East Potomac and to build on its ruins a championship golf course. They say trust is no longer an option. As it did with the East Wing, the administration has chosen arbitrariness over aiding the law. And then they go through the entire history of this park on the National Mall and talk about the 37 ,000 cubic yards of what the Trump administration has told the public is clean fill, which looks like it could be contaminated with lead, arsenic, benzopyrene, and asbestos.

16:58Michael Popok:so what is the judge going to do to do next okay i think she's going to put it back on the parties to come back to her if she sees demolition construction further termination of the lease she's ready to act i wanted to put this on your radar right now because this is a line in the sand or a sand trap about Trump trying to take over public land. This is what he's left with, you know, with polling numbers that are now in the historically low, pardon me,

17:39Michael Popok:with polling numbers that are now in the historically low 30s and even 20s, presents Trump knowing that he's going to lose and lose badly at the midterms, is now left with a going out of business sale, except it runs the other way with him. It's how much can he steal, remake, reshape, demolish, put his name on. You know, he has it in his mind that the entire National Mall is his, and that he wants to deface it with his imagery and idolatry before he gets out of office. and people who don't want to anger Donald Trump are giving him the means and the methods to do it. And it's up to federal courts to stop it.

18:22Michael Popok:This is the people's house, the people's park. District of Columbia is for the people, not the current occupant of the White House. We'll continue to follow it. Take a minute, help us get to 1.2 million subscribers. With your help, we'll get there before May is over on Legal AF YouTube channel. So until my next report, this is Michael. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

19:02Michael Popok:What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Wear legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

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