Ana Reyes is a federal judge in Washington, put on the bench by Joe Biden. Tonight she ruled on President Trump's plan for the East Potomac golf course. Seventy pages. Not one more tree comes down, and the government must give ten business days' notice in writing before it makes any lasting change to the course. East Potomac is a public course on federal land, opened in 1920 at twenty-five cents a round. The President wants Tom Fazio, the course architect, to rebuild it as a championship course and keep it public. He posted the plan October 18: closed November 15, reopened in about fifteen months. The next morning: work starts "IMMEDIATELY!" The middle you may know. The Park Service told the court at 4:55 on a Friday afternoon that it would cut up to 529 trees, started before 11 the next morning, and had nearly 430 down by the end of the day. The Justice Department moved to throw the judge off the case for bias. She said no in thirteen pages. The President called her "a crazed lunatic." Here's the part that matters. The Justice Department's defense was that no final plan exists, so there is nothing for a court to stop. Her first sentence: "Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President." She ruled the plan is real because the President said it is. Then: "If, as DOJ insists, President Trump is wrong, Secretary Burgum can just say so. He has not." Doug Burgum runs the Interior Department, whose Park Service runs the course. The people suing are the D.C. Preservation League and two golfers. Their lawyers include Abbe Lowell, who defended Hunter Biden in his gun and tax cases, and Norm Eisen, the House Democrats' counsel for Trump's first impeachment. She wrote the last word herself: the ruling is "subject, as all such opinions should be, to appellate review." November 15 is twenty days away. Until a higher court says otherwise, every shovel at East Potomac needs ten business days' notice, in writing, to the people suing him. 💎