Death Threats Over a Golf Course

The plaintiffs there were bringing a case based on sort of environmental and APA, Administrative Procedure Act claims.

saying that the government, the United States government, cannot transform the golf course into their new plan without going through process and environmental review, all kinds of things.

Historic review, cultural review.

And they may be right.

They may be wrong.

That's sort of their claim.

That was the merits of it, which was they were saying that this was improper.

Let's assume there may be some merit.

Let's assume also there may not be.

That's not really the issue for the day because this quickly escalated.

went down a rabbit hole where over 400 trees were felled over a three-day weekend that notice was given on late Friday.

And then they were removed on Saturday, leading to a hearing on Monday.

Monday, Indigenous Peoples Day.

Yeah.

And that then led to a motion to recuse the judge by the government.

Disqualify the judge.

And so she would have to say, I'm off the case because of either impropriety or the appearance of impropriety.

And she ruled on that in some very choice terms.

And I thought the motion was pretty shocking.

But that's sort of the sort of lay of the land.

But should we go back to sort of how the tree issue sort of came up, like the sort of what happened that weekend?

Yeah, and even maybe just real quick, go back a little further, because this is East Potomac Park.

If folks have ever been to Washington, D.C., if they've been on the National Mall, that extends from the Capitol past the Washington Monument down to the Lincoln Memorial.

But then jutting to the south of that, we have the Tidal Basin that has the Jefferson Memorial on it.

And even further south of that, a man-made island called Haynes Point.