Biden-appointed judge erupts over Trump's history of fiery clashes at Justice Department: 'You've lost all your credibility!'
Judge Anna Reyes yelled at state attorneys about the 430 trees cut down at East Potomac Golf Links and demanded answers about the announcement late Friday.
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A federal judge appointed by Biden, who previously filed a formal complaint against President Donald Trump's Justice Department alleging bias, erupted again Monday in a heated confrontation over the rapid removal of trees at a historic golf course in a national park.
Judge Anna Reiss delivered her latest rebuke during an emergency hearing on hundreds of trees removed from the East Potomac Golf Links at Haines Point, DC. Trump wants to turn the historic public center into a championship-caliber golf course like his courses in the United States, Ireland and Scotland — the court administration's latest clash with political opponents.
Journalist Scott McFarlane, who live-tweeted the hearing, described Reyes as "screaming" from government attorneys over the administration's announcement late Friday that tree removal would begin Saturday. According to McFarlane, a state attorney acknowledged that approximately 430 trees have already been cut down.
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"You lost your credibility!" Reyes told attorneys for the government, according to a live report from McFarlane's trial.
The administration believes the removals will trigger a 2019 National Park Service landscape restoration plan that precedes Trump's proposed redesign for the links, which are located on an island connected to the city by the Jefferson Memorial and the Francis Case Bridge on its western edge.
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Reyes, who was born in Uruguay and was nominated by Biden in 2023, previously called out a Trump administration lawyer for his religious beliefs during a lawsuit challenging Trump's restrictions on transgender military service — an order he called "biologically incorrect."
How would Jesus respond to "telling a group of people who are so worthless, so worthless that we won't let them into a homeless shelter," the judge asked? According to the complaint by Chad Meisel, then-chief of the US Department of Justice.
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Monday's hearing brought another heated debate, this time when state attorneys learned of the tree removal operation and why they waited until the end of the work week to notify the court.
"At 4:55 p.m. on a Friday weekend, the plaintiffs [com] and I noticed that hundreds of trees were being cut down," McFarlane said.
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When a government adviser reportedly confirmed knowledge of the operation on October 8 or 9 and said officials were awaiting details, Reyes demanded:
McFarlane tweeted that he had never heard a judge "yell at the top of his lungs at a lawyer" before, while the UK's Independent reported that Rees lashed out at the federal lawyer for 15 minutes.
The uproar comes as conservatives and progressive interests challenge the administration, including Obama's former ethics attorney Norm Eisen — who, according to his mission statement, has mounted "broad legal resistance" to the president through the Defenders of Democracy Fund.
Eisen tweeted a victory lap Monday after the court agreed to hear the case in an "emergency setting."
Preservationists believed that the government had not met applicable environmental and historic-preservation requirements.
The administration disputed that argument, arguing that tree removal is a permitted NPS landscape management separate from Trump's proposed bond renovation.
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