The Washington Post reported that trees are being taken down at East Potomac Park, including a cherry tree beside the fourteenth green on the Blue Course. The Interior Department said arborists are performing ordinary upkeep by taking out hazardous, nonnative invasive, or dying trees that cannot be restored, and that park trees are checked for risks to visitors.

The department did not tie the work to a proposed course redesign and did not say whether a federal court handling a related lawsuit had been told. Representative Don Beyer called the loss of historic cherry trees awful. A Democratic rapid-response account had claimed the administration meant to fell the Districts oldest cherry tree for a new Trump golf course, though the layout is a municipal course more than a century old.