A Golf Course in Washington D.C - What's the Game?

This piece by Ruth Marcus, a Contributing writer coverng law and the courts for the New Yorker Daily, uses what appears at first to be a minor dispute over a Washington, D.C., golf course to make a much larger argument about the Donald Trump administration's relationship with the judiciary.

Summary

The article centres on a lawsuit concerning President Trump's plan to close and redevelop a public golf course at East Potomac Park near the White House. The immediate controversy is not the golf course itself but the administration's decision to cut down more than 430 healthy trees after repeatedly assuring a federal judge that no significant changes were imminent.

Marcus argues that this episode is a vivid example of what she sees as the administration's growing disregard for judicial authority.

Key points include:

• For months, the government told U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes that there were no active redevelopment plans requiring court intervention.
• On the eve of a holiday weekend, government lawyers notified the court that up to 529 trees would be removed, and tree cutting began almost immediately before opponents had a realistic chance to respond.
• Judge Reyes reacted angrily in an emergency hearing, saying she felt misled by government assurances and questioning how officials could have believed their actions were acceptable.

Marcus places this incident within a broader pattern of conflict between the Trump administration and the courts. She cites:

• Trump's criticism of judges, including calls for impeachment.
• Justice Department ethics complaints and recusal requests directed at judges.
• Administration efforts to challenge lower federal courts that have blocked or questioned its policies.

According to Marcus, the golf-course case is especially revealing because it involves what she characterizes as an apparent disregard for clear judicial expectations in pursuit of a presidential objective.

The conflict escalated further when:

• The Justice Department sought Judge Reyes's recusal, accusing her of bias and excessive behaviour.
• Trump publicly attacked Reyes on social media, calling her a "crazed lunatic."
• The administration maintained that the tree removal was unrelated to course redevelopment, while Trump subsequently announced a timetable for closing the course and beginning construction, seemingly undermining that argument.

The Larger Theme

The golf course is really a symbol. Marcus's central claim is that the dispute illustrates a broader constitutional issue: whether the executive branch is willing to respect the authority of the courts when judicial oversight becomes inconvenient.

She suggests that the administration's conduct reflects not merely disagreement with judges but a willingness to evade, challenge, or undermine judicial constraints. The article closes with Judge Reyes's observation that a federal judge was receiving death threats over a golf course, underscoring Marcus's view that a seemingly local dispute has become part of a national struggle over the rule of law and the balance of powers.

In One Sentence

Marcus argues that the East Potomac golf-course controversy is far more than a fight about trees or golf: it is a revealing case study of what she sees as the Trump administration's increasingly confrontational and dismissive stance toward the federal judiciary.

Henry Moore and a Clenched Fist

 

At Kew Gardens recentrly,  I found myself standing for some time before a Henry Moore drawing of trees. So fascinated was I, that I forgot to check the title of the drawing, or when it was made.  But in it,  dark trunks rose from a tangled mass of roots, their forms twisting and straining against a pale background. It was an arresting image, full of weight and movement, but at first I saw nothing more than trees.

Then something changed.. On the left-hand side of the drawing, a root or branch suddenly appeared as a human arm ending in a clenched fist.

I had not been looking for it. The image simply emerged, and once seen it became difficult to ignore. The obvious question was whether Moore intended it or not. The trouble for me was,  that neither answer seemed satisfactory.

If he intended it, the fist becomes little more than a hidden symbol waiting to be discovered. If he did not, I was  tempted to dismiss it as coincidence. Yet neither explanation reflects the experience of standing before the drawing. The fist seemed meaningful, but not in the straightforward way that a symbol is meaningful. It appeared to belong naturally to the drawing itself, as though it had grown there among the roots and branches.

I have read and understood, that Moore spent a lifetime studying natural forms. He was fascinated by bones, stones, roots, landscapes and the human body. I am told, that what interested him was not simply how things looked, but the forces that shaped them: growth, weight, balance, pressure and movement.

Perhaps that is why the fist is so difficult to explain. The same underlying tensions that shape a tree also shape a human arm. A form may emerge in the creative process that belongs fully to neither category and yet is involved in both. But I guess what interests me,  is not whether this explanation is correct. It is that the drawing presented me with something that I think neither artist nor the viewer can finally account for.

We often assume that a work of art expresses something already known to the artist. But perhaps creation sometimes reveals something not consciously known beforehand. Forms emerge whose significance cannot be reduced either to intention or accident. 

I cannot know whether Moore saw the arm and the fist as I saw it.  I cannot know whether he intended it. Nor can I fully explain why they appeared so suddenly and so convincingly before my own eyes. All I know is that it is there.

Gram Parsons: Early Songs

 

Here on my record player is Another Side of This Life: The Lost Recordings of Gram Parsons 1965-1966, It is collection of early home and demo recordings that were not released until 2000. These tracks capture Parsons before he became famous with the International Submarine Band, The Byrds, and The Flying Burrito Brothers.  

The album  reveals a different Gram Parsons from the one most people know. Instead of the country-rock pioneer, here is a young musician deeply rooted in the mid-1960s folk revival. Most of the recordings feature Parsons alone with an acoustic guitar, performing a mixture of folk standards, contemporary songs by writers such as Fred Neil, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Tim Hardin, together with several of his own compositions. 

Highlights are the early versions of Parsons originals such as"Brass Buttons","November Nights", and"I Just Can't Take It Anymore", where you can already hear the lyrical melancholy that would later define his classic work.  

Not a studio masterpiece, then,  in the way that Sweetheart of the Rodeo or Grievous Angel are. But it is a fascinating historical document: a glimpse of Gram Parsons in the process of becoming Gram Parsons.